There was a Mesolithic settlement at Newbury. Artefacts were recovered from the Greenham Dairy Farm in 1963, and the Faraday Road site in 2002.[3] Additional material was found in excavations along the route of the Newbury Bypass.[4]

Part of the facade of Camp Hopson of Newbury, showing date 1663 and classical pilasters, in 2014.

Newbury was founded late in the 11th century following the Norman conquest as a new borough, hence its name, although there are references to the borough that predate the Domesday Survey it is not mentioned by name in the survey. However, its existence within the manor of Ulvritone is evident from the massive rise in value of that manor at a time when most manors were worth less than in Saxon times; in 1086 the Domesday Book assesses the borough as having land for 12 ploughs, 2 mills, woodland for 25 pigs, 11 villeins (resident farmhands, unfree peasant who owed his lord labour services), 11 bordars (unfree peasants with less land than villans/villeins), and 51 enclosures (private parks) rendering 70s 7d.

Doubt has been cast over the existence of 'Newbury Castle', but the town did have royal connections and was visited a number of times by King John and Henry III while hunting in the area.[5]

Historically, the town's economic foundation was the cloth trade, this is reflected in the person of the 16th century cloth magnate, Jack of Newbury, the proprietor of what may well have been the first factory in England, and the later tale of the Newbury Coat. The latter was the outcome of a bet as to whether a gentleman's suit could be produced by the end of the day from wool taken from a sheep's back at the beginning, the local legend was later immortalized in a humorous novel by Elizabethan writer Thomas Deloney.

The disruption of trade during the civil war, compounded by a collapse of the local cloth trade in the late 16th century, left Newbury impoverished, the local economy was boosted in the 18th century by the rise of Bath as a popular destination for the wealthy escaping London's summer heat and associated stench. Newbury was roughly halfway between London and Bath and an obvious stopping point in the two-day journey. Soon Newbury, and the Speenhamland area in particular, was filled with coaching inns of ever increasing grandeur and size. One inn, the George & Pelican, was reputed to have stabling for 300 horses. A theatre was built to provide the travellers with entertainment featuring the major stars of the age; in 1795 local magistrates, meeting at the George and Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, introduced the Speenhamland System which tied parish poor relief (welfare payments) to the cost of bread.

The pedestrianised Northbrook Street

The opening of the Great Western Railway to the north of Newbury effectively killed the coaching trade. Having been approximately midway on the Bath Road from London, Newbury became something of a backwater market town, with an economy based largely on agriculture and horse-racing; in the 1980s, British electronics firm Racal decided to locate their newly formed telecommunications company Racal Vodafone (later Vodafone UK) in the town. In the subsequent decades Newbury became something of a regional centre for the high-tech industries, and the town has since enjoyed a return to general economic prosperity.

Newbury is the administrative centre of the district administered by the unitary authority of West Berkshire, which as of 2011 has a population of 153,822 (an approximately straight-line increase of 15,022 since 1991).[6]

Newbury is also a civil parish, with parish council responsibilities undertaken by Newbury Town Council since 1997. Newbury Town Council currently has 23 councillors, representing seven wards of the town, currently: Brummel Grove, Clay Hill, Falkland, Northcroft, Pyle Hill, Victoria and St Johns, as of 2016, six of the councillors represent the Liberal Democrats and 17 represent the Conservative Party.[7]

The Civil Parish of Newbury consists of the town and the suburbs of Wash Common, the City, West Fields, East Fields and Speenhamland, the modern conurbation of Newbury, however, with close bus and road links and almost contiguous development, may be taken to include the surrounding villages of Speen, Donnington, Shaw and Greenham.[9]

Newbury has two very narrowly buffered settlements, Thatcham (25,267 inh. as at 2011) and Shaw cum Donnington (1,686 inh. as at 2011) forming an identifiable, informal greater Newbury urban and suburban conglomeration. In major use classes 11% of Newbury's land is occupied by roads and as of 2005, 34% of its land was occupied by domestic gardens.

2011 Published Statistics: Population, home ownership and extracts from Physical Environment, surveyed in 2005[10]

Newbury and its immediate surroundings constitute the major commercial and retail centre of West Berkshire, the local economy is inter-related to that of the eastern M4 corridor which has most of its industrial, logistical and research businesses close to Newbury, Reading and Slough, with smaller industrial estates in the county at Theale, Bracknell and Maidenhead. Newbury is home to the UK headquarters of the mobile network operatorVodafone, which is the town's largest employer with over 6,000 people on staff, before moving to their £129 million headquarters in the outskirts of the town in 2002, Vodafone used 64 buildings spread across the town centre.[11]

Following a similar east–west route is the A4 road from London to Bristol, historically the main route west from London, this road has been superseded as a long distance route by the M4 motorway which runs almost parallel and can be accessed 3 miles (4.8 km) to the north – its "Newbury junction" is the Chieveley interchange at Junction 13.

At Newbury this east–west route is crossed by a dual-carriageway Highways Agency north–south trunk road, from the major south coast port of Southampton to the industrial centres of the Midlands, although this route was once served by the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton railway line, today it is only served by the A34 road, which now bypasses Newbury to the west on an alignment partially using the old rail route (see also 'Newbury Bypass' below).

Until the completion of the bypass, the A34 and A4 met in the town centre at Robin Hood Roundabout, a complicated gyratory system encompassing 6 approaching roads, a fire station, ambulance station and an exit on the inside of the roundabout, which has a north-south flyover across the roundabout. In 2007, the sculpture Couple in Conversation was unveiled on the roundabout, providing a new landmark for one of the major gateways into the town.

The town's location at the intersection of the routes from London to Bristol and from Southampton to Birmingham made it, for many years, a transport bottleneck. In 1963 a Dual Carriageway was built east of the town centre to ease congestion and the opening of the M4 in 1971 moved the intersection of these major trunk routes three miles north of the town, to Chieveley, the ring road around the town still suffered serious congestion and the Newbury bypass was proposed in 1981. The plans were approved in 1990, however they were extremely controversial and this led to a major environmentalist campaign opposing the road development (dubbed the Third Battle of Newbury by parts of the national media). In spite of this, the road was built and finally opened in 1998. Within two months the road surface began to break up and the entire length of the bypass was eventually resurfaced over two weekends using an improved low-noise water-absorbent surface.

In August 2004, the improved A34-M4 junction 13 was re-opened which allowed north–south traffic on the A34 to completely bypass the earlier roundabout at the M4, this junction continued to be improved, with new road markings and traffic signals completed in 2008.

Newbury is home to one of England's major racecourses Newbury Racecourse, which celebrated its centenary in 2005, the most prestigious race in the calendar is the Hennessy Gold Cup which normally takes place in late November.

Newbury has one of the last remaining lidos in the UK, it was originally built in the 1890s, although the structure we see today was erected in the 1930s. The pool is still in use today and is capable of receiving more than 1000 visitors a day during peak times, it is owned and subsidised by West Berkshire District Council but managed by an external contractor Parkwood Leisure.[13]

Newbury was home to A.F.C. Newbury, which was sponsored by locally based Vodafone. In May 2006 Vodafone ended its sponsorship of the club,[14] following which the club collapsed. A local pub team from the Old London Apprentice took over the ground temporarily and now compete in the Reading League as Newbury F.C. Their future at the ground is uncertain as the owner (West Berkshire District Council) plans to turn it into a car park.

Newbury's rugby union club, Newbury R.F.C. (also sponsored by Vodafone), is based in the town. In the 2004/05 season, the club finished second in the National Two division earning promotion to National One and is now in the top 26 clubs nationally. Newbury had previously won National Four South (now renamed as National Three South) in 1996/97 with a 100% win record, the club was founded in 1928 and in 1996 moved to a new purpose-built ground at Monks Lane,[15] which has since hosted England U21 fixtures.

Cricket clubs in the town include Newbury Cricket Club (situated right in the town centre) and Falkland CC.

Newbury also has two athletics clubs: Team Kennet and Newbury Athletics Club. Newbury District Leagues exist in many other sports such as badminton, table tennis, squash and darts.

Victoria Park, near the centre of the town, is used for several events during the year such as the Newbury Waterways Festival, the Keep Off The Grass (KOTG) dance music event[16] and Crafty Craft, an improvised raft race along the canal.[17]

As well as lending out books, Newbury Library, which moved to a new building in July 2000, provides internet access and other services to its users and members.

The Corn Exchange providing a venue for both professional and amateur live performances. Other theatres near the town are the Watermill Theatre, and New Greenham Arts on the former Greenham Common air force base.

Annually the Newbury Spring Festival of classical music brings internationally renowned soloists and ensembles to a variety of venues in and around the town, the Newbury Comedy Festival which started in 2004 has become a feature in the town's cultural calendar.

Newbury is also home to the Donnington Grove estate, where a golf course was opened in 1993, the Donnington Grove mansion, built between 1763 and 1772, is a local historic landmark.

Film and media production companies in Newbury include 822 Productions, Preview Productions, Dudleigh Films and MWS Media, based at Greenham Business Park (formerly Greenham Common Air Base).[citation needed]

The following local newspapers are distributed in Newbury (circulation[18]):

Berkshire
–
Berkshire is a county in south east England, west of London. It was recognised as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of Windsor Castle by the Queen in 1957, Berkshire is a county of historic origin and is a home county, a ceremonial county and a non-metropolitan county without a county council. Berkshire County Council was the ma

4.
Physical map of Berkshire. From a book called Berkshire, by H. W. Monckton, published by Cambridge University Press, 1911. Map is credited to George Philip & Son, Ltd.

Population density
–
Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume, it is a quantity of type number density. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and most of the time to humans and it is a key geographical term. Population density is population divided by land area or water volume. Low densities may cause a vortex and lead to f

1.
Monaco in South Europe, currently holds the record for being the most densely populated nation in the world.

Ordnance Survey National Grid
–
The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Gr

London
–
London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city

Civil parishes in England
–
In England, a civil parish is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. It is a parish, in contrast to an ecclesiastical parish. A civil parish can range in size from a town with a population of around 80,000 to a single village with fewer than

1.
Map of English parishes and Welsh communities

Districts of England
–
The districts of England are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government. As the structure of government in England is not uniform. Some districts are styled as boroughs, cities, or royal boroughs, these are purely honorific titles, prior to the establishment of districts in the 1890s, the basic unit of loca

1.
Districts (England)

West Berkshire
–
West Berkshire is a local government district in the ceremonial county of Royal Berkshire, England, located almost equidistantly between Bristol and London. Its administrative town is Newbury and it is governed by the West Berkshire Council unitary authority, until 1 April 1998, Newbury District Council and Berkshire County council were responsible

1.
West Berkshire shown within Berkshire

Ceremonial counties of England
–
The ceremonial counties, also referred to as the lieutenancy areas of England, are areas of England to which a Lord Lieutenant is appointed. The Local Government Act 1888 established county councils to assume the functions of Quarter Sessions in the counties. It created new entities called administrative counties, the Act further stipulated that ar

1.
Ceremonial counties (England)

Regions of England
–
The regions are the highest tier of sub-national division in England. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within Government, while they no longer fulfil this role, they continue to be used for statistical and some administrative purposes. They define areas for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament, E

1.
Regions of England English regions

South East England
–
South East England is the most populous of the nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It consists of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, as with the other regions of England, apart from Greater London, the south east has no elected government. It is the third largest region of England,

Countries of the United Kingdom
–
The United Kingdom comprises four countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within the United Kingdom, a sovereign state, Northern Ireland, Scotland. England, comprising the majority of the population and area of the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not themselves listed in the International Organiza

England
–
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain

United Kingdom
–
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border wi

4.
The Treaty of Union led to a single united kingdom encompassing all Great Britain.

Postcodes in the United Kingdom
–
Postal codes used in the United Kingdom are known as postcodes. They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the GPO, a full postcode is known as a postcode unit and designates an area with a number of addresses or a single major delivery point. For example, the postcode of the Universit

1.
Street name signs on Birdbrook Road, Great Barr, Birmingham, showing old "Birmingham 22" (top) and modern "B44" postcodes.

Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
–
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom are administered by the UK governments Office of Communications. For this purpose Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, since 28 April 2001, almost all geographic numbers and most non-geographic numbers have 9 or 10 national numbers after the 0 trunk cod

1.
Location of the United Kingdom (dark green)

Thames Valley Police
–
It is one of the largest territorial police forces in England covering 2,200 square miles and a population of over 2.1 million people. The police force consists of 4,244 constables,506 special constables,466 Police Community Support Officers and 2,576 police staff, the force was one of around twenty borough forces that amalgamated with their county

Fire services in the United Kingdom
–
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty fire and rescue services, many FRS were previously known as brigades or county fire services, but almost all now use the standard terminology. They

Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
–
Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status. The NHS commissions most emergency services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other services, the public normally access emergency medical services through one of

South Central Ambulance Service
–
It is one of 10 NHS Ambulance Trusts providing England with emergency medical services, and is part of the National Health Service, receiving direct government funding for its role. There is no charge to patients for use of the service, as an ambulance service, SCAS primarily responds to emergency 999 calls, in addition to calls from the NHS non-em

1.
Map of the South Central Ambulance Service's coverage

List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies
–
There are 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom, each electing a single Member of Parliament to the House of Commons every five years. Voting last took place in all 650 of those constituencies at the United Kingdom general election on 7 May 2015, in addition there is the constituency of the Speaker, which by tradition does not belong to any part

Newbury (UK Parliament constituency)
–
Newbury is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Richard Benyon, a Conservative. The constituency consists of most of West Berkshire and includes Newbury, Thatcham, to the east, the rest of West Berkshire is incorporated into the Wokingham and Reading West constituencies. Since its creation it has bee

Geographic coordinate system
–
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a

1.
Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.

River Kennet
–
The Kennet is a river in the south of England, and a tributary of the River Thames. The lower reaches of the river are navigable to craft and are known as the Kennet Navigation. This, together with the Avon Navigation, the Kennet and Avon Canal, the former local government district of Kennet in Wiltshire was named after it. The River Kennet has bee

1.
Part of two uppermost reaches of the River Kennet near Avebury, as a stream.

4.
Kennet Mouth with bridge of the Great Western Railway by Brunel, Reading Kennet is navigable from the junction with the Thames at Kennet Mouth near Reading, upstream to Newbury where it joins the Kennet and Avon Canal.

Kennet and Avon Canal
–
The Kennet and Avon Canal is a waterway in southern England with an overall length of 87 miles, made up of two lengths of navigable river linked by a canal. The name is used to refer to the entire length of the navigation rather than solely to the central canal section. From Bristol to Bath the waterway follows the course of the River Avon before t

St Nicolas Church, Newbury
–
St Nicolas Church is the parish church of Newbury, Berkshire, and is situated just south of the main bridge over the River Kennet, in the centre of the town. It is chiefly remarkable for the consistency of its Perpendicular Gothic architectural style, st. Nicolas Church is dedicated to the eponymous Bishop of Myra in the fourth century. A church wa

1.
A view from the south west

2.
View of church from graveyard

Newbury Racecourse
–
Newbury Racecourse is a racecourse in the civil parish of Greenham, adjoining the town of Newbury in Berkshire, England. It has courses for flat races and over jumps and it hosts one of Great Britains 31 Group 1 flat races, the Lockinge Stakes. The racecourse held its first race meeting on 26/27 September 1905 at its current location, the first rec

1.
The Berkshire Stand and The Grandstand

2.
Horserace finishing at Newbury

3.
Crowds at Newbury

4.
Cois Farraig jumps the last in front at Newbury

Vodafone UK
–
Vodafone UK is a provider of telecommunications services in the United Kingdom, and a part of the Vodafone Group, the worlds second-largest mobile phone company. As of September 2016, Vodafone UK has 18.01 million subscribers and is the third largest mobile telecommunications network nationally after EE, in 1981, Racal Electronics Group won its bid

Micro Focus International
–
Micro Focus International plc is a multinational software and information technology business based in Newbury, Berkshire, England. The firm provides software and consultancy services for clients updating legacy systems to modern platforms. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE100 Index.1 percent of the

1.
Micro Focus International plc

Oxford
–
Oxford is a city in the South East region of England and the county town of Oxfordshire. With an estimated 2015 population of 168,270, it is the 52nd largest city in the United Kingdom, the city is situated 57 miles from London,69 miles from Bristol,65 miles from both Southampton and Birmingham and 25 miles from Reading. The city is known worldwide

1.
From top left to bottom right: Oxford skyline panorama from St Mary's Church; Radcliffe Camera; High Street from above looking east; University College; High Street by night; Natural History Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum.

Winchester
–
Winchester is a city and the county town of Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a government district. It is situated 61 miles south-west of London and 13.6 miles from Southampton, at the time of the 2011 Census, Winchester had a population of 45,184. The wider City of Winchester district which includes s

Swindon
–
Swindon is a large town in Wiltshire, South West England, midway between Bristol,35 miles to the west and Reading,35 miles to the east. London is 78 miles to the east, and Cardiff is 78 miles to the west, at the 2011 census, it had a population of 185,609. Swindon became an Expanded Town under the Town Development Act 1952, Swindon railway station

Reading, Berkshire
–
Reading is a large, historically important town in Berkshire, England, of which it is the county town. The 19th century saw the coming of the Great Western Railway, Today Reading is a major commercial centre, with involvement in information technology and insurance, and, despite its proximity to London, has a net inward commuter flow. The first evi

Berkshire Downs
–
The Berkshire Downs are a range of chalk downland hills in southern England, part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Berkshire Downs are wholly within the county of Berkshire. The western parts of the downs are also known as the Lambourn Downs, the Berkshire Downs run east–west, with their scarp slope facing north int

North Wessex Downs
–
The North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is located in the English counties of West Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. The AONB covers an area of some 1,730 km2 and it takes the form of a horseshoe on its side, with the open end facing east, surrounding the town of Newbury and the River Kennet watershed. The western e

1.
This is a typical view of the chalk North Wessex Downs in the north west part of Hampshire

Area of outstanding natural beauty
–
An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is an area of countryside in England, Wales or Northern Ireland which has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of their importance, by the relevant public body, Natural England, Natural Resources Wales. In place of AONB, Scotland uses the s

1.
View from the Gower peninsula, the first AONB to be designated.

2.
Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England and Wales

3.
Falmer stadium under construction in 2010 in the former Sussex Downs AONB

Hampshire
–
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, the capital city of England. The larger South Hampshire metropolitan area has a population of 1,547,000, Hampshire is notable for housing the birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force. It is bordered by Do

1.
Southampton from Netley Hospital

2.
Flag of Hampshire County Council

3.
The Beaulieu River

4.
Southampton Docks

County
–
A county is a geographical region of a country used for administrative or other purposes, in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French conté or cunté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count or a viscount. The modern French is comté, and its equivalents in other languages are contea, contado, comtat, condado, G

1.
Counties of Iran

Donnington, Berkshire
–
Donnington is a village in the civil parish of Shaw-cum-Donnington just north of the town of Newbury in Berkshire, England. Donnington Castle, a medieval castle of some historical significance, is in the village. It was the home of Richard Abberbury the Elder, the second Battle of Newbury was fought between Newbury and Donnington, as an attack on t

Donnington Castle
–
Donnington Castle is a ruined medieval castle, situated in the small village of Donnington, just north of the town of Newbury in the English county of Berkshire. It was founded by Sir Richard Abberbury the Elder in 1386 and was bought by Thomas Chaucer before the castle was taken under control during the Tudor period. The site is under the care of

Lambourn
–
Lambourn /ˈlæmbɔːrn/ is a large village and civil parish in West Berkshire. It lies just north of the M4 Motorway between Swindon and Newbury, and borders Wiltshire to the west and Oxfordshire to the north. After Newmarket it is the largest centre of training in England, and is home to a rehabilitation centre for injured jockeys, an equine hospital

Walbury Hill
–
Walbury Hill is a hill in Berkshire, England. It is located in the southwest of the county, close to the borders with Hampshire and Wiltshire, and around 7 kilometres southeast of the town of Hungerford. At 297 metres above sea level, it is the highest hill in Berkshire, on the hills summit is the Iron Age hill fort of Walbury Camp. Combe Gibbet st

Landscape garden
–
The English garden presented an idealized view of nature. The work of Lancelot Capability Brown was particularly influential, by the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk, the gardens of the future Emperor Paul. It also had a influence on

Highclere Castle
–
Highclere Castle /ˈhaɪklɪər/ is a country house in the Jacobethan style by the architect Charles Barry, with a park designed by Capability Brown. The 5, 000-acre estate is in Hampshire, England, about 5 miles south of Newbury and it is the country seat of the Earl of Carnarvon, a branch of the Anglo-Welsh Herbert family. Highclere Castle was a loca

M4 corridor
–
The M4 corridor is an area in the United Kingdom adjacent to the M4 motorway, which runs from London to South Wales. It is a major high-technology hub, important cities and towns linked by the M4 include London, Slough, Bracknell, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Swindon, Bath, Bristol, Newport, Cardiff, and Swansea. The area is served by the Great We

1.
Reading International Business Park. This crescent of offices beside the A33 are home to Verizon, a telecommunications company. They were formerly the European headquarters of WorldCom before its demise

Bracknell
–
Bracknell is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, England. It lies 11 miles to the east of Reading,9 miles south of Maidenhead,10 miles southwest of Windsor,16 miles northwest of Guildford and 34 miles west of central London. The town has a population of 77,256 and is twinned with the German city of Leverkusen, t

1.
Bracknell Post Office

2.
Holy Trinity, built in 1851

3.
Easthampstead Park Conference Centre

4.
South Hill Park lies in Bracknell and houses an arts centre

Maidenhead
–
Maidenhead is a large town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies south-west of the River Thames, but at Maidenhead, the town has a population of 73,404. Its urban area has a population of just under 95,000, Maidenheads name stems from the riverside area where the New wharf or Maiden Hythe

Slough
–
Slough is a large town in Berkshire, England,21 miles west of London,3 miles north of Windsor,6 miles east of Maidenhead,12 miles south-east of High Wycombe and 20 miles north-east of Reading. The A4 and the Great Western Main Line pass through the town, in 2011, Sloughs population was the most ethnically diverse in the United Kingdom outside Londo

1.
Slough Trading Estate

2.
Former GWR locomotive 6664 photographed near the engine shed at Slough, October 1955.

3.
The newly refurnished entrance to the Queensmere Shopping Mall.

4.
Slough Trading Estate played a major part in making Slough an important business centre in South East England

Thatcham
–
Thatcham is a town in the historic county of Berkshire, England, centred 3 miles east of Newbury,14 miles west of Reading and 54 miles west of London. Its population grew rapidly in the half of the 20th century. Thatcham straddles the River Kennet, the Kennet and Avon Canal, the A4 and it is served by Thatcham railway station on the line between Re

2.
A nineteenth century Photochrom of the Great Bath at the Roman Baths. The entire structure above the level of the pillar bases is a later construction and was not a feature of the building in Roman days.

1.
Photograph of the Berlin Wall taken from the West side. The Wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing and to stop an economically disastrous drain of workers. It was a symbol of the Cold War and its fall in 1989 marked the approaching end of the war.

1.
Berkshire
–
Berkshire is a county in south east England, west of London. It was recognised as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of Windsor Castle by the Queen in 1957, Berkshire is a county of historic origin and is a home county, a ceremonial county and a non-metropolitan county without a county council. Berkshire County Council was the main county governance from 1889 to 1998 except for the separately administered County Borough of Reading, in 1974, significant alterations were made to the countys administrative boundaries although the traditional boundaries of Berkshire were not changed. The towns of Abingdon, Didcot and Wantage were transferred to Oxfordshire, Slough was gained from Buckinghamshire, since 1998, Berkshire has been governed by the six unitary authorities of Bracknell Forest, Reading, Slough, West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead and Wokingham. It borders the counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Greater London, Surrey, according to Asser, it takes its name from a large forest of box trees that was called Bearroc. Berkshire has been the scene of notable battles through its history. Alfred the Greats campaign against the Danes included the Battles of Englefield, Ashdown, Newbury was the site of two English Civil War battles, the First Battle of Newbury in 1643 and the Second Battle of Newbury in 1644. The nearby Donnington Castle was reduced to a ruin in the aftermath of the second battle, another Battle of Reading took place on 9 December 1688. It was the only military action in England during the Glorious Revolution. Reading became the new county town in 1867, taking over from Abingdon, boundary alterations in the early part of the 20th century were minor, with Caversham from Oxfordshire becoming part of the Reading county borough, and cessions in the Oxford area. On 1 April 1974 Berkshires boundaries changed under the Local Government Act 1972, Berkshire took over administration of Slough and Eton and part of the former Eton Rural District from Buckinghamshire. 94 Signal Squadron still keep the Uffington White Horse in their insignia, the original Local Government White Paper would have transferred Henley-on-Thames from Oxfordshire to Berkshire, this proposal did not make it into the Bill as introduced. On 1 April 1998 Berkshire County Council was abolished under a recommendation of the Banham Commission, unlike similar reforms elsewhere at the same time, the non-metropolitan county was not abolished. Berkshire divides into two distinct sections with the boundary lying roughly on a north-south line through the centre of Reading. The eastern section of Berkshire lies largely to the south of the River Thames, in two places the county now includes land to the north of the river. Tributaries of the Thames, including the Loddon and Blackwater, increase the amount of low lying land in the area. Beyond the flood plains, the land rises gently to the county boundaries with Surrey, much of this area is still well wooded, especially around Bracknell and Windsor Great Park. In the west of the county and heading upstream, the Thames veers away to the north of the county boundary, leaving the county behind at the Goring Gap

Berkshire
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Windsor Castle, viewed from the Long Walk
Berkshire
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Berkshire shown within England
Berkshire
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Aerial view of Virginia Water Lake on the southern edge of Windsor Great Park
Berkshire
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Physical map of Berkshire. From a book called Berkshire, by H. W. Monckton, published by Cambridge University Press, 1911. Map is credited to George Philip & Son, Ltd.

2.
Population density
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Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume, it is a quantity of type number density. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and most of the time to humans and it is a key geographical term. Population density is population divided by land area or water volume. Low densities may cause a vortex and lead to further reduced fertility. This is called the Allee effect after the scientist who identified it, commonly this may be calculated for a county, city, country, another territory, or the entire world. The worlds population is around 7,000,000,000, therefore, the worldwide human population density is around 7,000,000,000 ÷510,000,000 =13.7 per km2. If only the Earths land area of 150,000,000 km2 is taken into account and this includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. If Antarctica is also excluded, then population density rises to over 50 people per km2, thus, this number by itself does not give any helpful measurement of human population density. Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states, microstates, cities with high population densities are, by some, considered to be overpopulated, though this will depend on factors like quality of housing and infrastructure and access to resources. Most of the most densely populated cities are in Southeast Asia, though Cairo, for instance, Milwaukee has a greater population density when just the inner city is measured, and the surrounding suburbs excluded. Arithmetic density, The total number of people / area of land, physiological density, The total population / area of arable land. Agricultural density, The total rural population / area of arable land, residential density, The number of people living in an urban area / area of residential land. Urban density, The number of people inhabiting an urban area / total area of urban land, ecological optimum, The density of population that can be supported by the natural resources. S. States by population density Selected Current and Historic City, Ward & Neighborhood Density

Population density
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Monaco in South Europe, currently holds the record for being the most densely populated nation in the world.
Population density
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Mongolia is the least densely populated country in the world.

3.
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources. The Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system is used to provide references for worldwide locations. European-wide agencies also use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System system, the grid is based on the OSGB36 datum, and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962. It replaced the previously used Cassini Grid which, up to the end of World War Two, had issued only to the military. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain, more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS, the British maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W. Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly, the distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W. 2° 0′ 5″ W. OSGB36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS84 has been used, a geodetic transformation between OSGB36 and other terrestrial reference systems can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true, the definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy, the difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB36 are the same as for WGS84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall, the WGS84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB36 equivalents, the smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent. But Great Britain has not shrunk by 100+ metres, a point near Lands End now computes to be 27.6 metres closer to a point near Duncansby Head than it did under OSGB36. For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, there are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain, S, T, N and H. The O square contains an area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide

4.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area

5.
Civil parishes in England
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In England, a civil parish is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. It is a parish, in contrast to an ecclesiastical parish. A civil parish can range in size from a town with a population of around 80,000 to a single village with fewer than a hundred inhabitants. In a limited number of cases a parish might include a city where city status has been granted by the Monarch. Reflecting this diverse nature, a parish may be known as a town, village. Approximately 35% of the English population live in a civil parish, as of 31 December 2015 there were 10,449 parishes in England. On 1 April 2014, Queens Park became the first civil parish in Greater London, before 2008 their creation was not permitted within a London borough. The division of land into ancient parishes was linked to the system, parishes. The manor was the unit of local administration and justice in the early rural economy. Later the church replaced the court as the rural administrative centre. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the power to levy a rate to fund relief of the poor was conferred on the authorities by the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601. Both before and after this optional social change, local charities are well-documented, the parish authorities were known as vestries and consisted of all the ratepayers of the parish. As the number of ratepayers of some parishes grew, it increasingly difficult to convene meetings as an open vestry. In some, mostly built up, areas the select vestry took over responsibility from the body of ratepayers. This innovation improved efficiency, but allowed governance by a self-perpetuating elite, by the 18th century, religious membership was becoming more fractured in some places, due for instance to the progress of Methodism. The legitimacy of the parish came into question and the perceived inefficiency. Sanitary districts covered England in 1875 and Ireland three years later, the replacement boards were each entitled to levy their own rate in the parish. The church rate ceased to be levied in many parishes and became voluntary from 1868, the ancient parishes diverged into two distinct systems of parishes during the 19th century

Civil parishes in England
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Map of English parishes and Welsh communities

6.
Districts of England
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The districts of England are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government. As the structure of government in England is not uniform. Some districts are styled as boroughs, cities, or royal boroughs, these are purely honorific titles, prior to the establishment of districts in the 1890s, the basic unit of local government in England was the parish overseen by the parish church vestry committee. Vestries dealt with the administraction of both parochial and secular governmental matters, parishes were the successors of the manorial system and historically had been grouped into hundreds. Hundreds once exercised some supervising administrative function, however, these powers ebbed away as more and more civic and judicial powers were centred on county towns. From 1834 these parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions, creating areas for administration of the Poor Law and these areas were later used for census registration and as the basis for sanitary provision. In 1894, based on these earlier subdivisions, the Local Government Act 1894 created urban districts and rural districts as sub-divisions of administrative counties, another reform in 1900 created 28 metropolitan boroughs as sub-divisions of the County of London. Meanwhile, from this date parish-level local government administration was transferred to civil parishes, the setting-down of the current structure of districts in England began in 1965, when Greater London and its 32 London boroughs were created. They are the oldest type of still in use. In 1974, metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan counties were created across the rest of England and were split into metropolitan districts, in London power is now shared again, albeit on a different basis, with the Greater London Authority. During the 1990s a further kind of district was created, the unitary authority, metropolitan boroughs are a subdivision of a metropolitan county. These are similar to unitary authorities, as the county councils were abolished in 1986. Most of the powers of the county councils were devolved to the districts but some services are run by joint boards, the districts typically have populations of 174,000 to 1.1 million. Non-metropolitan districts are second-tier authorities, which share power with county councils and they are subdivisions of shire counties and the most common type of district. These districts typically have populations of 25,000 to 200,000, the number of non-metropolitan districts has varied over time. Initially there were 296, after the creation of unitary authorities in the 1990s and late 2000s and these are single-tier districts which are responsible for running all local services in their areas, combining both county and district functions. They were created in the out of non-metropolitan districts, and often cover large towns. In addition, some of the smaller such as Rutland, Herefordshire

Districts of England
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Districts (England)

7.
West Berkshire
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West Berkshire is a local government district in the ceremonial county of Royal Berkshire, England, located almost equidistantly between Bristol and London. Its administrative town is Newbury and it is governed by the West Berkshire Council unitary authority, until 1 April 1998, Newbury District Council and Berkshire County council were responsible for the region at local government level. West Berkshire is semi-rural in character, with most of the living in the wooded Kennet valley. Apart from Newbury, the main centres in the district include Thatcham, Hungerford, Pangbourne. 30% of the population resides in the East of the district, larger villages include Theale, Purley-on-Thames, Burghfield, Mortimer and Hermitage. West Berkshire borders Hampshire to the south, Wiltshire to the west, around three-quarters of the land is designated North Wessex DownsArea of Outstanding Natural Beauty, ranging from the Berkshire Downs to the Thames Valley. West Berkshire has a number of water running through the area. In addition to the River Thames, there are the Rivers Lambourn, Kennet, Pang, Bourne and the Kennet and Avon Canal and a number of tributaries that feed these rivers. Properties within flood plains may be at risk of flooding from rising waters or from water coming up through the ground in some periods of heavy and/or prolonged periods of rain. Purley and Pangbourne are particularly at risk, West Berkshire has the 21st largest economy in England, characterised by low unemployment, above average wages, and abundance of jobs in technology and financial sectors. West Berkshire is also home to Atomic Weapons Establishment, near Aldermaston, Wolseley plc, Bayer, the coat of arms for West Berkshire was established in 1974 for Newbury District Council. Upon the creation of the authority it was inherited by West Berkshire Council. The colours of red and gold in the arms represent industry, the corn on the shield represents the agriculture industry which is important to the area, whilst the cogwheels represent manufacturing and manufacturing achievement. The mural crown represents local government and the grassy mount symbolises the downs of the surrounding area, finally, the horseman represents the two battles of Newbury in the English civil war. Since 5 May 2005 the West Berkshire Council is Conservative-controlled because of a by-election in Thatcham North, before that, the Liberal Democrats and Conservative Party had an equal number of seats but the Liberal Democrats had control due to the casting vote of the council chairman. The Liberal Democrats had first taken power in 1991, there are 10 state-funded secondary schools operating in West Berkshire as well as numerous primary schools and a special school provision. There are also a number of independent schools

West Berkshire
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West Berkshire shown within Berkshire

8.
Ceremonial counties of England
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The ceremonial counties, also referred to as the lieutenancy areas of England, are areas of England to which a Lord Lieutenant is appointed. The Local Government Act 1888 established county councils to assume the functions of Quarter Sessions in the counties. It created new entities called administrative counties, the Act further stipulated that areas that were part of an administrative county would be part of the county for all purposes. The greatest change was the creation of the County of London, which was both an administrative county and a county, it included parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent. Other differences were small and resulted from the constraint that urban sanitary districts were not permitted to straddle county boundaries, apart from Yorkshire, counties that were subdivided nevertheless continued to exist as ceremonial counties. In 1974, administrative counties and county boroughs were abolished, at this time, Lieutenancy was redefined to use the new metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties directly. Following a further rearrangement in 1996, Avon, Cleveland, Hereford and Worcester, Cleveland was partitioned between North Yorkshire and Durham. Hereford and Worcester was divided into the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Humberside was split between Lincolnshire and a new county of East Riding of Yorkshire. Rutland was restored as a ceremonial county, many county boroughs were re-established as unitary authorities, this involved establishing the area as an administrative county, but usually not as a ceremonial county. Most ceremonial counties are therefore entities comprising local authority areas, as they were from 1889 to 1974, the Association of British Counties, a traditional counties lobbying organisation, has suggested that ceremonial counties be restored to their ancient boundaries, as nearly as practicable. In present-day England, the ceremonial counties correspond to the shrieval counties, the Lieutenancies Act 1997 defines counties for the purposes of lieutenancies in terms of metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties as well as Greater London and the Isles of Scilly. Although the term is not used in the Act, these counties are known as ceremonial counties. gov. uk

Ceremonial counties of England
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Ceremonial counties (England)

9.
Regions of England
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The regions are the highest tier of sub-national division in England. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within Government, while they no longer fulfil this role, they continue to be used for statistical and some administrative purposes. They define areas for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament, Eurostat also uses them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics regions within the European Union. The regions generally follow the boundaries of the former standard regions, the London region has a directly elected Mayor and Assembly. Six regions have local authority leaders boards to assist with correlating the headline policies of local authorities, the remaining two regions no longer have any administrative functions, having abolished their regional local authority leaders boards. In 1998, regional chambers were established in the eight regions outside of London, the regions also had an associated Government Office with some responsibility for coordinating policy, and, from 2007, a part-time regional minister within the Government. House of Commons regional Select Committees were established in 2009, Regional ministers were not reappointed by the incoming Coalition Government, and the Government Offices were abolished in 2011. Regional development agencies were public bodies established in all nine regions in 1998 to promote economic development and they had certain delegated functions, including administering European Union regional development funds, and received funding the central government as well. After about 500 AD, England comprised seven Anglo-Saxon territories – Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, the boundaries of some of these, which later unified as the Kingdom of England, roughly coincide with those of modern regions. During Oliver Cromwells Protectorate in the 1650s, the rule of the Major-Generals created 10 regions in England, proposals for administrative regions within England were mooted by the British government prior to the First World War. In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill was passing through parliament, the Bill was expected to introduce a devolved parliament for Ireland, and as a consequence calls were made for similar structures to be introduced in Great Britain or Home Rule All Round. On 12 September the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, within England, he suggested that London, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands would make natural regions. While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a widely anticipated. In 1946 nine standard regions were set up, in central government bodies, statutory undertakings. However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s, creation of some form of provinces or regions for England was an intermittent theme of post-Second World War British governments. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed the creation of eight provinces in England, one-fifth of the advisory councils would be nominees from central government. The boundaries suggested were the eight now existing for economic planning purposes, a minority report by Lord Crowther-Hunt and Alan T. Peacock suggested instead seven regional assemblies and governments within Great Britain, some elements of regional development and economic planning began to be established in England from the mid-1960s onwards

Regions of England
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Regions of England English regions

10.
South East England
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South East England is the most populous of the nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It consists of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, as with the other regions of England, apart from Greater London, the south east has no elected government. It is the third largest region of England, with an area of 19,096 km², and is also the most populous with a population of over eight. Its proximity to London and connections to several national motorways have led to south east England becoming an economic hub and it is the location of Gatwick Airport, the UKs second-busiest airport, and its coastline along the English Channel provides numerous ferry crossings to mainland Europe. The region is known for its countryside, which includes the North Downs, the River Thames flows through the region and its basin is known as the Thames Valley. The region has many universities, the University of Oxford is ranked among the best in the world. South east England is host to sporting events, including the annual Henley Royal Regatta, Royal Ascot and the Epsom Derby. Some of the events of the 2012 Summer Olympics were held in the south east, including the rowing at Eton Dorney, the largest city in the region is Brighton & Hove. The dominant influence on the economy is neighbouring London. The highest point is Walbury Hill in Berkshire at 297 metres, until 1999, there was a south east Standard Statistical Region, which also included the counties of Bedfordshire, Greater London, Essex and Hertfordshire. The former south east Civil Defence Region covered the area as the current government office region. The South East is also used as a synonym for the home counties. The population of the region at the 2011 census was 8,634,750 making it the most populous English region, the major conurbations of the region include Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton, Portsmouth, Southampton and Reading. Settlements closer to London are part of the known as the Greater London Urban Area. The South East has the highest percentage of people born outside of Britain other than London. Estimates in 2007 state 87. 2% of people as White British,4. 8% Other White,3. 5% South Asians,1. 5% Mixed Race,1. 6% Black British,0. 7% Chinese,0. 7% Other. The area also has some seats where there is support for other parties, for example, Slough and Oxford for Labour. Buckingham, the seat of Speaker John Bercow, is also in this region, out of 83 parliamentary seats, the Conservatives hold 78

11.
Countries of the United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom comprises four countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within the United Kingdom, a sovereign state, Northern Ireland, Scotland. England, comprising the majority of the population and area of the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not themselves listed in the International Organization for Standardization list of countries. However the ISO list of the subdivisions of the UK, compiled by British Standards, Northern Ireland, in contrast, is described as a province in the same lists. Each has separate governing bodies for sports and compete separately in many international sporting competitions. Northern Ireland also forms joint All-Island sporting bodies with the Republic of Ireland for most sports, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are dependencies of the Crown and are not part of the UK. Similarly, the British overseas territories, remnants of the British Empire, are not part of the UK, southern Ireland left the United Kingdom under the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. * Figures for GVA do not include oil and gas revenues generated beyond the UKs territorial waters, various terms have been used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Wales was described as the country, principality, and dominion of Wales, outside Wales, England was not given a specific name or term. The Laws in Wales Acts have subsequently been repealed, the Acts of Union 1707 refer to both England and Scotland as a part of a united kingdom of Great Britain The Acts of Union 1800 use part in the same way to refer to England and Scotland. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, which repealed the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the Interpretation Act 1978 provides statutory definitions of the terms England, Wales and the United Kingdom, but neither that Act nor any other current statute defines Scotland or Northern Ireland. Use of the first three terms in other legislation is interpreted following the definitions in the 1978 Act and this definition applies from 1 April 1974. United Kingdom means Great Britain and Northern Ireland and this definition applies from 12 April 1927. In 1996 these 8 new counties were redistributed into the current 22 unitary authorities, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are regions in their own right while England has been divided into nine regions. The official term rest of the UK is used in Scotland, for example in export statistics and this term is also used in the context of potential Scottish independence to mean the UK without Scotland. The alternative term Home Nations is sometimes used in sporting contexts, the second, or civic group, contained the items about feeling British, respecting laws and institutions, speaking English, and having British citizenship. Contrariwise, in Scotland and Wales there was a much stronger identification with each country than with Britain, studies and surveys have reported that the majority of the Scots and Welsh see themselves as both Scottish/Welsh and British though with some differences in emphasis. The propensity for nationalistic feeling varies greatly across the UK, and can rise and it reported that 37% of people identified as British, whilst 29% identified as Irish and 24% identified as Northern Irish

Countries of the United Kingdom

12.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years

13.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state‍—‌the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government

14.
Postcodes in the United Kingdom
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Postal codes used in the United Kingdom are known as postcodes. They are alphanumeric and were adopted nationally between 11 October 1959 and 1974, having been devised by the GPO, a full postcode is known as a postcode unit and designates an area with a number of addresses or a single major delivery point. For example, the postcode of the University of Roehampton in London is SW15 5PU, the postcode of GCHQ is GL51 0EX, where GL signifies the postal town of Gloucester. The postal town refers to an area and does not relate to a specific town. GL51 is one of the postcodes for the town of Cheltenham which is where GCHQ is located, the London post town covers 40% of Greater London. On inception it was divided into ten districts, EC, WC, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W. The S and NE sectors were later abolished and these divisions changed little, usually only changed for operational efficiency. Some older road signs in Hackney still indicate the North East sector/district, following the successful introduction of postal districts in London, the system was extended to other large towns and cities. Liverpool was divided into Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western districts in 1864/65, in 1917 Dublin – then still part of the United Kingdom – was divided into numbered postal districts. These continue in use in a form by An Post. In 1923 Glasgow was divided in a way to London. In January 1932 the Postmaster General approved the designation of some urban areas into numbered districts. In November 1934 the Post Office announced the introduction of numbered districts in every town in the United Kingdom large enough to justify it. Pamphlets were issued to each householder and business in ten areas notifying them of the number of the district in which their premises lay, the pamphlets included a map of the districts, and copies were made available at local head post offices. The public were invited to include the district number in the address at the head of letters. A publicity campaign in the following year encouraged the use of the district numbers, the slogan for the campaign was For speed and certainty always use a postal district number on your letters and notepaper. A poster was fixed to every box in the affected areas bearing the number of the district. Every post office in the district was also to display this information

Postcodes in the United Kingdom
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Street name signs on Birdbrook Road, Great Barr, Birmingham, showing old "Birmingham 22" (top) and modern "B44" postcodes.
Postcodes in the United Kingdom

15.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
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Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom are administered by the UK governments Office of Communications. For this purpose Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, since 28 April 2001, almost all geographic numbers and most non-geographic numbers have 9 or 10 national numbers after the 0 trunk code. All mobile telephone numbers have 10 national numbers after the 0 trunk code, regions with shorter area codes, typically large cities, permit the allocation of more telephone numbers as the local number portion has more digits. Local customer numbers are four to eight figures long, the total number of digits is ten, but in a very few areas the total may be nine digits. The area code is referred to as an STD or a dialling code in the UK. The code allocated to the largest population is for London, the code allocated to the largest area is for all of Northern Ireland. The UK Numbering Plan also applies to three British Crown dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man—even though they are not part of the UK itself. Possible number formats for UK telephone numbers are as follows, Number ranges starting 01 can have NSN length as 10 or 9 digits, the 0800 range can have NSN length as 10,9 or 7 digits. The 0845 range can have NSN length as 10 or 7 digits, the 0500 range has NSN length as 9 digits only. There are no numbers in the UK with an NSN length of 8 digits. Geographic telephone numbers in the UK always have nine or ten digits, four-digit area codes have either six-digit subscriber numbers or a mix of five- and six-digit subscriber numbers. Xxxxxx This is the used by most areas. It has an area code and a six digit subscriber number. These area codes were changed by adding a 1 directly after the zero as a part of PhONEday in 1995. Just short of 581 areas use this format, and the area range from 01200 to 01998. A small number of areas also have a few subscriber numbers that have only five digits. That is, almost all area codes now have only six digit local numbers, six of the four-digit area codes are known as mixed areas as they share those four digits with the twelve five-digit area codes. The numbers therefore have only nine digits after the initial zero trunk code and these area codes were changed by adding a 1 directly after the initial zero as a part of PhONEday in 1995

Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom
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Location of the United Kingdom (dark green)

16.
Thames Valley Police
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It is one of the largest territorial police forces in England covering 2,200 square miles and a population of over 2.1 million people. The police force consists of 4,244 constables,506 special constables,466 Police Community Support Officers and 2,576 police staff, the force was one of around twenty borough forces that amalgamated with their county police force. These were Buckinghamshire Constabulary, Oxfordshire Constabulary, Berkshire Constabulary, Reading Borough Police, under the Police Act 1964 these five forces were amalgamated on 1 April 1968 to form Thames Valley Constabulary. The incumbent commissioner is Anthony Stansfeld, a Conservative Party candidate elected with 34. 7% of the votes in the first round of voting and 57. 2% of the votes after the second round. The police and crime commissioner is scrutinised by the Thames Valley Police, Thames Valley was previously overseen by a police authority consisting of 19 members, made up of councillors, members from unitary authorities, independents and a magistrate. Following the implementation of the Local Policing Model in April 2011 and these are coterminous with local authority boundaries. These in turn are split into a number of neighbourhoods which are coterminous with parish boundaries and this alignment is to ensure that local policing services are delivered in an accountable manner. Other functions that used to be held at Basic Command Unit level are now delivered at Force Headquarters level using a service approach. These teams consist of officers, community support, special constables and police staff who work to patrol and they use marked vans which read neighbourhood policing on the side rear panel under the Thames Valley police corporate logo. These officers will typically be unarmed and rarely carry taser weapons, the neighbourhood police vans double up as prisoner transport vans when the larger detention van is off-area or busy. However most LPA police vehicles are available to this unit, LPA Response units work out of most major stations in the force area. These officer are often issued with Taser weapons. These officers may be tasked to high crime areas for an increased police presence or to conduct follow up investigations. Both the Neighbourhood Policing Group and Incident Response Unit units all share the LPA standard Vauxhall Astra police car, some rural police offices make use of Vauxhall Antaras as a more effective vehicle. However most divisions with the exception of the Slough, South Oxfordshire and Vale, Thames Valley Police have approximately 52 operational police dogs. The dogs are donated from the RSPCA or public, and are trained at the force headquarters. They usually serve until they are 8 years old, receiving refresher training every year, Thames Valley Police patrols 196 miles of motorways including the M1, M4, M40, A329, A404 and M25, as well as many other A route roads including the busy A43. Thames Valleys Roads Policing Team typically operate a diverse array of vehicles and these may include the Volvo S70 marked vehicles, S80 unmarked and marked Mitsubishi Shogun 4x4

17.
Fire services in the United Kingdom
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The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty fire and rescue services, many FRS were previously known as brigades or county fire services, but almost all now use the standard terminology. They are distinct from and governed by an authority, which is the legislative, public and administrative body. Fire authorities in England and Wales, and therefore fire and rescue services, Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire and rescue services, and so their authorities are effectively committees of the devolved parliaments. The total budget for services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. The devolved government in Scotland has an agency, HMFSI Scotland. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain,1947, Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed entirely in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire,1959, Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act, it dealt with pensions, staffing arrangements and provision of services by other authorities. It was repealed in England and Wales along with the 1947 Act,1999, Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of fire strikes. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the action still ongoing. Bains report ultimately led to a change in the relating to firefighting. 2002, Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004, Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, generally only applying to England and it came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises,2006, The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on Fire, promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation. But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries, There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association. The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee, in June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report. For example, where FRSs were historically inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office, Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee heard evidence on the Fire Control project. Called to give evidence were Cllr Brian Coleman and Cllr James Pearson from the Local Government Association, also giving evidence Matt Wrack from the Fire Brigades Union and John Bonney Chief Fire Officers Association

18.
Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom
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Emergency care including ambulance and emergency department treatment is free to everyone, regardless of immigration or visitor status. The NHS commissions most emergency services through the 14 NHS organisations with ambulance responsibility across the UK. As with other services, the public normally access emergency medical services through one of the valid emergency telephone numbers. This led to the formation of predominantly county based ambulance services, which gradually merged up and changed responsibilities until 2006, when there were 31 NHS ambulance trusts in England. Following further changes as part of the NHS foundation trust pathway, the commissioners in each region are responsible for contracting with a suitable organisation to provide ambulance services within their geographical territory. The primary contract for each area is held by a public NHS body, of which there are 11 in England. The service was operated before reorganisation in 1974 by the St Andrews’ Ambulance Association under contract to the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service was established in 1995 by parliamentary order, and serves the whole of Northern Ireland. The Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust was established on 1 April 1998, there is a large market for private and voluntary ambulance services, with the sector being worth £800m to the UK economy in 2012. This places the voluntary providers in direct competition with private services, expenditure on private ambulances in England increased from £37m in 2011−12 to £67. 5m in 2013/4, rising in London from £796,000 to more than £8. 8m. In 2014−15, these 10 ambulance services spent £57.6 million on 333,329 callouts of private or voluntary services - an increase of 156% since 2010−11, in 2013, the CQC found 97% of private ambulance services to be providing good care. These private, registered services are represented by the Independent Ambulance Association, there are also a number of unregistered services operating, who do not provide ambulance transport, but only provide response on an event site. These firms are not regulated, and are not subject to the checks as the registered providers, although they may operate similar vehicles. There are a number of ambulance providers, sometimes known as Voluntary Aid Services or Voluntary Aid Societies, with the main ones being the British Red Cross. The history of the ambulance services pre-dates any government organised service. As they are in competition for work with the private ambulance providers. Voluntary organisations have also provided cover for the public when unionised NHS ambulance trust staff have taken industrial action, there are a number of smaller voluntary ambulance organisations, fulfilling specific purposes, such as Hatzola who provide emergency medical services to the orthodox Jewish community in some cities. These have however run into difficulties due to use of vehicles not legally recognised as ambulances, all emergency medical services in the UK are subject to a range of legal and regulatory requirements, and in many cases are also monitored for performance. This framework is largely statutory in nature, being mandated by government through a range of primary and secondary legislation and this requires all providers to register, to meet certain standards of quality, and to submit to inspection of those standards

19.
South Central Ambulance Service
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It is one of 10 NHS Ambulance Trusts providing England with emergency medical services, and is part of the National Health Service, receiving direct government funding for its role. There is no charge to patients for use of the service, as an ambulance service, SCAS primarily responds to emergency 999 calls, in addition to calls from the NHS non-emergency number. The service also provides a transport service for patients in life-threatening condition. The NEPTS transports patients unable to use public transport due to their conditions, patients using outpatient clinics. The Trust also has a division, which provides first aid training to members of the public. It has a resilience and specialist operations department which plans for major or hazardous incidents and this includes a Hazardous Area Response Team, which responds to emergencies involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials, as well as major incidents. The Trust also trains and supports volunteer community first responders and it is the only NHS ambulance organisation in the UK to be supported by its own League of Friends, a registered charity. This group had founded in 1982 to raise funds for the former Oxfordshire Ambulance NHS Trust. The Trust achieved Foundation status on 1 March 2012, becoming known as South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust. In June 2011 it was named Englands top performing ambulance service, managing to respond to 77. 5% of Cat A calls within the 8 minute target time, compared to the national average of 74. 9%. In October 2011 the BBC discovered that SCAS spent more on private ambulance services to cover 999 calls than any other service in the country, on 1 March 2012, the Trust became an NHS Foundation Trust. In October 2013 the Trust accidentally published on its website a document listing the age, sexuality and it took over patient transport services in Hampshire in October 2014. In 2014 the trust held a recruitment drive in Poland to help fill vacancies, on November 1st 2016, it was announced that the trust would take over the running of NEPTS in the south-east of England from April 2017. Performance of SCAS is provided by national NHS England Ambulance Quality Indicators,1. ^ A Red 1 call is assigned to patients in cardiac arrest. 2. ^ A Red 2 call is assigned to other potentially life-threatening incidents, such as stroke,3. ^ A Red 19 call is assigned to other incidents in which patient transport is needed

South Central Ambulance Service
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Map of the South Central Ambulance Service's coverage

20.
List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies
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There are 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom, each electing a single Member of Parliament to the House of Commons every five years. Voting last took place in all 650 of those constituencies at the United Kingdom general election on 7 May 2015, in addition there is the constituency of the Speaker, which by tradition does not belong to any party. The number of seats rose from 646 at the 2005 general election after proposals made by the commissions for England, Wales. Constituencies in Scotland remained unchanged, as the Boundary Commission for Scotland had completed a review just before the 2005 general election, for the 2013 review this was primarily the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. The Sainte-Laguë formula method is used to form groups of seats split between the four parts of the United Kingdom and the English Regions, the electorate figures given in the second column of the tables below are those used by the commissions during their reviews. These electorate figures date from the start of the review in each country, England, February 2000, Scotland, June 2001, Wales, December 2002, and Northern Ireland, May 2003. Of the 650 seats listed below,533 are in England,59 in Scotland,40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland, Scotland – No changes from 2005 election. Wales – Number of seats unchanged, three seats were abolished and three were created, Aberconwy, Arfon, and Dwyfor Meirionnydd, Northern Ireland – No extra or fewer seats allocated. England, North Yorkshire, Hampshire, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Norfolk, Essex, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, isle of Wight maintained its status as one constituency, the largest by electorate. The City of York was divided into two seats, neither overlapping part of North Yorkshire, North London, Birmingham and the metropolitan counties of Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear and South Yorkshire lost a seat each. Herefordshire and Worcestershire, to reflect their full reinstatement as separate counties, were considered in separate reviews, bath, Bristol and Somerset underwent arguably the most significant changes to reflect the abolition of Avon. Updated electorate figures from December 2010 have been added for the English, lists of electoral districts by nation Boundary Commission for N. I. Fifth Periodical Report – Parliamentary Constituencies of Northern Ireland

21.
Newbury (UK Parliament constituency)
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Newbury is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Richard Benyon, a Conservative. The constituency consists of most of West Berkshire and includes Newbury, Thatcham, to the east, the rest of West Berkshire is incorporated into the Wokingham and Reading West constituencies. Since its creation it has been a Conservative or Liberal/Liberal Democrat seat, sometimes seemingly marginal and sometimes seen as a safe seat, West Berkshire is also home to Atomic Weapons Establishment, near Aldermaston, Wolseley plc, Bayer and Pepsico. There are high proportions of detached and semi-detached housing, and lower than average dependency on social housing, the seat includes the former family home of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, wife of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge in Bucklebury. Neighbouring constituencies The constituencies bordering Newbury are, Wantage, Henley, Reading West, Wokingham, Basingstoke, North West Hampshire and Devizes. 1885-1918, The Municipal Boroughs of Newbury and Reading, the Sessional Divisions of Ilsley, Lambourn, Newbury, and Reading, 1918-1950, The Municipal Boroughs of Newbury and Wokingham, the Rural Districts of Hungerford and Newbury, and parts of the Rural Districts of Bradfield and Wokingham. 1950-1955, The Municipal Borough of Newbury, and the Rural Districts of Bradfield, Hungerford, 1955-1974, The Municipal Borough of Newbury, the Rural Districts of Bradfield, Hungerford, and Newbury, and the County Borough of Reading wards of Norcot and Tilehurst. 1974-1983, The Municipal Borough of Newbury, and the Rural Districts of Bradfield, Hungerford, originally, Newbury was part of a larger constituency of Berkshire, which returned two Members of Parliament, increased to three in the Reform Act of 1832. The constituency in 2010 produced the third lowest share of the vote for Labour, one of five lost deposits for Labour nationally), an incumbent MP has been defeated just four times, in the elections of 1906,1923,1924, and 2005. The 2001 general election saw David Rendel returned with a majority of 2,415. Turnout was above average at 67. 3%, in the 1997 general election, contrary to many expectations, David Rendel managed to keep hold of his seat. The Newbury by-election of 1993 was held after Judith Chaplin died and it was won by David Rendel with an impressive swing of 28. 4%. However, turnout was down on the year at 71. 3%. The by-election in Newbury was the first in a string of losses for the Conservative Party. It is also famed for having a long ballot paper. In the 1992 general election the new Conservative Party candidate won the seat with an absolute majority, the turnout was 82. 76%, higher than the nationwide average. Labour achieved their fifth worst result of the 1992 election in Newbury with only a 6. 0% share of the vote, after the 1970 general election, Newburys boundaries were altered to reduce the size of the electorate which had grown to over 85,000. After the boundary changes, the electorate numbered around 72,000 people and this came into effect for the first general election in February 1974

22.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation

Geographic coordinate system
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Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.

23.
River Kennet
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The Kennet is a river in the south of England, and a tributary of the River Thames. The lower reaches of the river are navigable to craft and are known as the Kennet Navigation. This, together with the Avon Navigation, the Kennet and Avon Canal, the former local government district of Kennet in Wiltshire was named after it. The River Kennet has been assigned as a Site of Special Scientific Interest from near its sources west of Marlborough down to Woolhampton and this is primarily because it has an extensive range of rare plants and animals that are unique to chalk watercourses. In these early stages it passes close by many sites including Avebury Henge, West Kennet Long Barrow. From there the river flows through Marlborough, Hungerford and Newbury before flowing into the Thames on the reach above Sonning Lock at Reading in Berkshire. The upper reaches of the River Kennet have two tributaries, the River Og which flows into the Kennet at Marlborough and the River Dun which enters at Hungerford, the Kennets principal tributaries below Marlborough are the River Lambourn, the River Enborne and the Foudry Brook. For six miles to the west of, and through, Reading, the Kennet supports a secondary channel, the Holy Brook, the Horseshoe Bridge at Kennet Mouth, a timber-clad iron-truss structure, was built in 1891 as a way for horses towing barges to cross the river. Originally this short stretch of river was under the control of the Abbey, today, including Blakes Lock. From High Bridge through to Newbury, the river was navigable between 1718 and 1723 under the supervision of the engineer John Hore of Newbury. Known as the Kennet Navigation, this stretch of the river is now administered by the Canal & River Trust as part of the Kennet, the River Kennet is a haven for various plants and animals. Its course takes it through the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the protection that this status affords the Kennet means that many endangered species of plants and animals can be found here. Animal species such as the vole, grass snake, reed bunting, brown trout. Crayfish are very common in parts of the river, and not forgetting the foundation to supporting this varied wildlife food chain, there are the insects, many hundreds of species, common and rare, that can be found in and around the River Kennet. There are large hatches of mayflies, whose long-tailed, short-lived adults are a food of trout, many species of water beetle. Caddisflies are also numerous, especially in the late summer. Alongside the river, the beds, grasses and other vegetation support many other insect species, including the scarlet tiger moth, poplar hawk moths. Throughout its history, water mills on the Kennet have been a source of power for various pre-industrial and industrial activities, in places the river has been built up to provide an additional head of water to drive the mills

24.
Kennet and Avon Canal
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The Kennet and Avon Canal is a waterway in southern England with an overall length of 87 miles, made up of two lengths of navigable river linked by a canal. The name is used to refer to the entire length of the navigation rather than solely to the central canal section. From Bristol to Bath the waterway follows the course of the River Avon before the canal links it to the River Kennet at Newbury. In all, the waterway incorporates 105 locks, the two river stretches were made navigable in the early 18th century, and the 57-mile canal section was constructed between 1794 and 1810. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the canal fell into disuse after the opening of the Great Western Railway. In the latter half of the 20th century the canal was restored in stages, after decades of dereliction and much restoration work, it was fully reopened in 1990. The Kennet and Avon Canal has been developed as a heritage tourism destination for boating, canoeing, fishing, walking and cycling. Later, around 1626, Henry Briggs made a survey of the two rivers and noted that the land between them was level and easy to dig and he proposed a canal to connect them, but following his death in 1630 the plan was dropped. The main alternative to transport for the carriage of goods between Bristol and London was a hazardous sea route through the English Channel. The small coastal sailing ships of the day were often damaged by Atlantic storms, plans for a waterway were shelved until the early 18th century. However, in 1715, work was authorised to make the River Kennet navigable from Reading to Newbury, work commenced in 1718, under the supervision of surveyor and engineer John Hore of Newbury. In 1723, despite local opposition, the Kennet Navigation opened. The River Avon had historically been navigable from Bristol to Bath, in 1727, navigation was restored, with the construction of six locks, again under the supervision of John Hore. The first cargo of Deal boards, Pig-Lead and Meal reached Bath in December, the two river navigations were built independently of one another, in order to meet local needs, but they eventually led to plans to connect them and form a through route. In 1788 a Western Canal was proposed to trade and communication links to towns such as Hungerford, Marlborough, Calne. The following year the engineers Barns, Simcock and Weston submitted a proposed route for this canal, the name was changed from Western Canal to Kennet and Avon Canal to avoid confusion with the Grand Western Canal, which was being proposed at the same time. In 1793 a further survey was conducted by John Rennie, the proposed route was accepted by the Kennet and Avon Canal Company, chaired by Charles Dundas, and the company started to take subscriptions from prospective shareholders. In July 1793 Rennie suggested further alterations to the route, including the construction of a tunnel in the Savernake Forest, on 17 April 1794 the Kennet and Avon Canal Act received the Royal Assent and construction began

25.
St Nicolas Church, Newbury
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St Nicolas Church is the parish church of Newbury, Berkshire, and is situated just south of the main bridge over the River Kennet, in the centre of the town. It is chiefly remarkable for the consistency of its Perpendicular Gothic architectural style, st. Nicolas Church is dedicated to the eponymous Bishop of Myra in the fourth century. A church was first built in this spot during Norman times, the present parish church was entirely rebuilt, probably between the years 1509-1533. It is in the style of the late Perpendicular period. In Fullers History of the Worthies of England, published in 1663, it is stated, John Winchcombe, built the church of Newberry, from the pulpit westward to the tower inclusively, and died about the year 1520. Although the church was restored by the Victorians, they made no major structural alterations. The plan of the church is typical for a church, consisting of nave. Considered large compared to other churches of the style, the nave has a clerestory. These aisles open into what were chantry-chapels on either side of the chancel, the southern chantry-chapel still functions as such but the northern is used as a vestry and contains the organ. There is a tower at the end which contains a peal of ten bells. The back eight bells date from 1803 and were cast from the now defunct Wells of Aldbourne bell foundry, the bells were re-hung in 1933 with new fittings and were augmented from 8 to 10 bells. The front 2 date from 1933 and were cast by Mears & Stainbank of Whitechapel Road, the tenor bell, which weighs 21-2-1, is in the note of D. The stained glass date from the Victorian restoration by Henry Woodyer as do the external crenellations along the roof-line. There is a Jacobean Pulpit dating from 1607, the current Rector is the Rev Will Hunter Smart who was inducted to the parish in 2011

St Nicolas Church, Newbury
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A view from the south west
St Nicolas Church, Newbury
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View of church from graveyard

26.
Newbury Racecourse
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Newbury Racecourse is a racecourse in the civil parish of Greenham, adjoining the town of Newbury in Berkshire, England. It has courses for flat races and over jumps and it hosts one of Great Britains 31 Group 1 flat races, the Lockinge Stakes. The racecourse held its first race meeting on 26/27 September 1905 at its current location, the first recorded racing at Newbury took place in 1805 with Newbury Races, an annual two-day race meeting at Enborne Heath. The meeting lasted until 1811 when it transferred to Woodhay Heath until 1815, Newbury Racecourse didnt come into existence for another 90 years when Kingsclere trainer, John Porter proposed a new racecourse at Newbury. In April 1904 the Newbury Racecourse Company was formed and purchased the land and construction began of the buildings, marnes was presented with a Silver Cup and Trigg received a gold mounted whip. National Hunt racing followed shortly after Flat racing and in 1906, nine days racing were planned for Newbury in 1906 – six on the Flat, a members badge which also covered the two days in 1905 was priced at 7 guineas. During the First World War Newbury Racecourse was used as a camp for German prisoners. Queen Elizabeth II spent her 86th birthday at Newbury Racecourse and she watched the races from the Royal Box although her two horses, Sequence ridden by Ryan Moore and Momentary ridden by Hayley Turner, did not win. The racecourse has a railway station, which sees heavy traffic. It also acts as a venue for conferences, weddings and Hen, on 12 February 2011, two horses, Marching Song and Fenix Two, collapsed and died in the Paddock while parading for the first race of the day. Two others also appeared to have affected, Kid Cassidy. The novice hurdle race went ahead, starting about 20 min late, on 17 February, the preliminary results of the investigation into the incident were released

27.
Vodafone UK
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Vodafone UK is a provider of telecommunications services in the United Kingdom, and a part of the Vodafone Group, the worlds second-largest mobile phone company. As of September 2016, Vodafone UK has 18.01 million subscribers and is the third largest mobile telecommunications network nationally after EE, in 1981, Racal Electronics Group won its bid for the private sector UK Cellular licence, and created Racal Telecomms Division. The same year, Racal formed a joint venture with Millicom named Racal Vodafone, Vodafone made the first ever cellular telephone call in the United Kingdom on 1 January 1985, from St Katharine Docks to Newbury, and launched the UKs first cellular network later that year. Vodapage was launched two years later, providing 80% of the United Kingdoms population with a paging service, Racal Telecom was demerged from Racal Electronics in 1991, becoming Vodafone Group, and introduced the countrys first GSM mobile phone network the same year. The company launched Vodata in 1994, providing data, fax. Vodafone also began working with Globalstar to develop and launch a satellite to provide a phone service. On 5 January 1999, Vodafone UK connected its 5 millionth customer, the first 3G voice call in the UK was made in 2001 on the Vodafone UK network, with an initial network of 30 base stations in the Thames Valley. In 2003, Vodafone introduced the Speaking Phone, a phone for blind & visually impaired users, Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G was launched in 2005, a data card that uses the networks 3G capabilities to connect laptop users to the internet. Vodafone UK won Mobile Retailer’s National Retailer of the Year in 2005 and was awarded Best Network in the 2010 Mobile News and Mobile Awards. Vodafone invested £5 million to ensure that charities do not incur any costs, or commissions deducted from donations, ensuring that they receive 100% of donations. Vodafone and O2 signed a deal in June 2012 which will see the two pool their network technology, creating a single national grid of 18,500 transmitter sites. Both networks will continue to carry their own independent mobile spectrum, on 20 February 2013, Ofcom announced that Vodafone had been awarded spectrum in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands for 4G LTE coverage, bidding around £790 million for the spectrum. The service became available to customers in London on 29 August, on 1 April 2012, Vodafone agreed a takeover of Cable & Wireless Worldwide at a cost of just over £1 billion. Following the acquisition of CWW, Vodafone began working on a consumer Broadband and TV proposition, Vodafone launched its broadband offering to the UK public on 12 October 2015. Work is ongoing for the launch of Vodafones UK TV service, spectrum capacity on the Vodafone UK 4G network Vodafone LTE 1800MHz and 2100MHz is only available in some areas, having been refarmed from 2G and 3G. Vodafone operates a retail estate, with more than 480 stores located across the UK that sell Home & Business landline & broadband, mobile phone handsets, Vodafone contracts & SIM offers. A Tech Team section was rolled out in November 2011 to Vodafone Elite status Stores in cities & large towns, Vodafone also introduced the RED Box to its stores at the same time, which allows phone users to transfer contents between handsets. Some of the music festivals involved in the scheme had their own Vodafone VIP areas, in May 2013, the Vodafone VIP Mobile Application developed by Invitation Digital was launched on both iPhone and Android platforms

28.
Micro Focus International
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Micro Focus International plc is a multinational software and information technology business based in Newbury, Berkshire, England. The firm provides software and consultancy services for clients updating legacy systems to modern platforms. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE100 Index.1 percent of the merged company, the resultant company would retain its current name and listing on the LSE. The company was founded in 1976, and in its early years, in 1981, it became the first company to win the Queens Award for Industry purely for developing a software product. The product was CIS COBOL, a standard-compliant COBOL implementation for microcomputers, in 1998, the company acquired Intersolv Inc, an applications enablement business, for US$534 million and the combined business was renamed Merant. In 2001 the business was demerged from Merant with help from Golden Gate Capital Partners and it was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005. On June 2008, the acquired the Israeli NASDAQ listed software company NetManage for US$73.3 million. In July 2009, the company acquired Borland, a developer of application lifecycle management tools, in December 2013, Micro Focus acquired the Orbix, Orbacus and Artix software product lines from Progress Software. These market-leading implementations of the CORBA standard were developed by IONA Technologies. On 2015, Micro Focus acquired Authasas, which produces authentication middleware, on 22 March 2016, Micro Focus announced its intent to acquire Serena Software, then valued at $540 million. The acquisition was completed on 2 May,2016, on 7 September 2016, Micro Focus announced its intent to merge with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s software business segment. In August 2010, the discovered that the New South Wales Police Force had illegally distributed 16,000 copies of the ViewNow platform,9,500 more than the licence allowed. The company alleged police and other agencies were using 16,500 copies of its software on various computers when police were only entitled to 6,500 licences. The police force maintained during the proceedings that it had paid for a site licence that entitled it to unlimited installations of the software for all of its officers. Despite this, it settled the matter out of court in 2012, the other agencies previously settled the matter out of court, also for undisclosed sums. The product areas consist of Visual COBOL, mainframe products and services, the companys financial results are summarised below, Note, Accounts to 2004, prepared according to UK Generally Accepted Accounting Practice. Accounts from 2005 onwards, prepared according to International Financial Reporting Standards, the principal shareholders of Micro Focus at 31 July 2009, were Standard Life, Majedie Asset Management, and BlackRock

Micro Focus International
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Micro Focus International plc

29.
Oxford
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Oxford is a city in the South East region of England and the county town of Oxfordshire. With an estimated 2015 population of 168,270, it is the 52nd largest city in the United Kingdom, the city is situated 57 miles from London,69 miles from Bristol,65 miles from both Southampton and Birmingham and 25 miles from Reading. The city is known worldwide as the home of the University of Oxford, buildings in Oxford demonstrate notable examples of every English architectural period since the late Saxon period. Oxford is known as the city of dreaming spires, a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold, Oxford has a broad economic base. Its industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing and a number of information technology and science-based businesses. Oxford was first settled in Saxon times and was known as Oxenaforda, meaning Ford of the Oxen. It began with the establishment of a crossing for oxen around AD900. In the 10th century, Oxford became an important military frontier town between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex and was on several occasions raided by Danes, Oxford was heavily damaged during the Norman Invasion of 1066. Following the conquest, the town was assigned to a governor, Robert DOyly, the castle has never been used for military purposes and its remains survive to this day. DOyly set up a community in the castle consisting of a chapel. The community never grew large but it earned its place in history as one of Britains oldest places of formal education and it was there that in 1139 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his History of the Kings of Britain, a compilation of Arthurian legends. Mary at Oseney and to the canons serving God in that place and we have made this concession and confirmation in the Common council of the City and we have confirmed it with our common seal. These are those who have made this concession and confirmation, a grandson of King John established Rewley Abbey for the Cistercian Order, and friars of various orders all had houses of varying importance at Oxford. Parliaments were often held in the city during the 13th century, the Provisions of Oxford were instigated by a group of barons led by Simon de Montfort, these documents are often regarded as Englands first written constitution. Richard I of England and John, King of England the sons of Henry II of England, were born at Beaumont Palace in Oxford, on 8 September 1157 and 24 December 1166 respectively. A plaque in Beaumont Street commemorates these events, the University of Oxford is first mentioned in 12th century records. Of the hundreds of Aularian houses that sprang up across the city, what put an end to the halls was the emergence of colleges. Oxfords earliest colleges were University College, Balliol and Merton and these colleges were established at a time when Europeans were starting to translate the writings of Greek philosophers

Oxford
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From top left to bottom right: Oxford skyline panorama from St Mary's Church; Radcliffe Camera; High Street from above looking east; University College; High Street by night; Natural History Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum.
Oxford
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The Radcliffe Camera, completed in 1748
Oxford
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Royal proclamation granting Lord Mayoralty to Oxford.
Oxford
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Photochrom of the High Street, 1890–1900

30.
Winchester
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Winchester is a city and the county town of Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a government district. It is situated 61 miles south-west of London and 13.6 miles from Southampton, at the time of the 2011 Census, Winchester had a population of 45,184. The wider City of Winchester district which includes such as Alresford. Winchester developed from the Roman town of Venta Belgarum, which in turn developed from an Iron Age oppidum. Winchesters major landmark is Winchester Cathedral, one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, with the distinction of having the longest nave and overall length of all Gothic cathedrals in Europe. The city is home to the University of Winchester and Winchester College, the area around Winchester has been inhabited since prehistoric times, with three Iron Age hillforts, Orams Arbour, St. Catherines Hill, and Worthy Down all in the nearby vicinity. In the Late Iron Age, an urban settlement type developed, known as an oppidum. It was overrun by the confederation of Gaulish tribes known as the Belgae sometime during the first century BCE and it seems to have been known as Wentā or Venta, from the Brittonic for town or meeting place. After the Roman conquest of Britain, the settlement served as the capital of the Belgae and was distinguished as Venta Belgarum, Venta of the Belgae. Although in the years of the Roman province it was of subsidiary importance to Silchester and Chichester. At the beginning of the century, Winchester was given protective stone walls. At around this time the city covered an area of 144 acres, there was a limited suburban area outside the walls. Like many other Roman towns however, Winchester began to decline in the fourth century. Ford identifies the community as the Cair Guinntguic listed by Nennius among the 28 cities of Britain in his History of the Britains, amid the Saxon invasions of Britain, cemeteries dating to the 6th and 7th centuries suggest a revival of settlement. The city became known as Wintan-ceastre in Old English, in 648, King Cenwalh of Wessex erected the Church of SS Peter and Paul, later known as the Old Minster. This became a cathedral in the 660s when the West Saxon bishopric was transferred from Dorchester-on-Thames, the citys first mint appears to date from this period. In the early tenth century there were two new establishments, the convent of Nunnaminster, founded by Alfreds widow Ealhswith

Winchester
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Winchester city centre and Cathedral from the North West
Winchester
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Hamo Thornycroft 's statue of King Alfred the Great in Winchester.
Winchester
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The Winchester Buttercross (Sept. 2010).
Winchester
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Winchester High Street in the mid 19th century.

31.
Swindon
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Swindon is a large town in Wiltshire, South West England, midway between Bristol,35 miles to the west and Reading,35 miles to the east. London is 78 miles to the east, and Cardiff is 78 miles to the west, at the 2011 census, it had a population of 185,609. Swindon became an Expanded Town under the Town Development Act 1952, Swindon railway station is on the line from London Paddington to Bristol. Swindon Borough Council is an authority, independent of Wiltshire Council since 1997. Residents of Swindon are known as Swindonians, the town and wider borough also has the headquarters of the Nationwide Building Society and a Honda car manufacturing plant. The original Anglo-Saxon settlement of Swindon sat in a position atop a limestone hill. It is referred to in the Domesday Book as Suindune, believed to be derived from the Old English words swine and dun meaning pig hill or possibly Sweyns hill, Swindon was a small market town, mainly for barter trade, until roughly 1848. This original market area is on top of the hill in central Swindon, the Industrial Revolution was responsible for an acceleration of Swindons growth. It started with the construction of the Wilts and Berks Canal in 1810, the canals brought trade to the area and Swindons population started to grow. Between 1841 and 1842, Isambard Kingdom Brunels Swindon Works was built for the repair, the GWR built a small railway village to house some of its workers. The Steam Railway Museum and English Heritage, including the English Heritage Archive, in 1878 the fund began providing artificial limbs made by craftsmen from the carriage and wagon works, and nine years later opened its first dental surgery. In his first few months in post the dentist extracted more than 2000 teeth, from the opening in 1892 of the Health Centre, a doctor could also prescribe a haircut or even a bath. The cradle-to-grave extent of service was later used as a blueprint for the NHS. The Mechanics Institute, formed in 1844, moved into a building looking rather like a church and included a covered market, on 1 May 1855. The New Swindon Improvement Company, a co-operative, raised the funds for this path self-improvement and it was a groundbreaking organisation that transformed the railways workforce into some of the countrys best-educated manual workers. It had the UKs first lending library, and a range of improving lectures, access to a theatre, the Institute also nurtured pioneering trades unionists and encouraged local democracy. During the second half of the 19th century, Swindon New Town grew around the line between London and Bristol. In 1900, the market town, Old Swindon, merged with its new neighbour at the bottom of the hill to become a single town

32.
Reading, Berkshire
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Reading is a large, historically important town in Berkshire, England, of which it is the county town. The 19th century saw the coming of the Great Western Railway, Today Reading is a major commercial centre, with involvement in information technology and insurance, and, despite its proximity to London, has a net inward commuter flow. The first evidence for Reading as a settlement dates from the 8th century, by 1525, Reading was the largest town in Berkshire, and tax returns show that Reading was the 10th largest town in England when measured by taxable wealth. By 1611, it had a population of over 5000 and had grown rich on its trade in cloth, the 18th century saw the beginning of a major iron works in the town and the growth of the brewing trade for which Reading was to become famous. During the 19th century, the town rapidly as a manufacturing centre. It is ranked the UKs top economic area for economic success and wellbeing, according to such as employment, health, income. Reading is also a regional retail centre serving a large area of the Thames Valley. Every year it hosts the Reading Festival, one of Englands biggest music festivals, sporting teams based in Reading include Reading Football Club and the London Irish rugby union team, and over 15,000 runners annually compete in the Reading Half Marathon. In 2015, Reading had an population of 232,662. The town is represented in Parliament by two members, and has been continuously represented there since 1295, for ceremonial purposes the town is in the county of Berkshire and has served as its county town since 1867, previously sharing this status with Abingdon-on-Thames. It is in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway. Reading is 75 miles east of Bristol,25 miles south of Oxford,42 miles west of London,17 miles north of Basingstoke,13 miles south-west of Maidenhead and 20 miles east of Newbury. Reading may date back to the Roman occupation of Britain, possibly as a port for Calleva Atrebatum. However the first clear evidence for Reading as a settlement dates from the 8th century, the name probably comes from the Readingas, an Anglo-Saxon tribe whose name means Readas People in Old English, or less probably the Celtic Rhydd-Inge, meaning Ford over the River. In late 870, an army of Danes invaded the kingdom of Wessex, on 4 January 871, in the first Battle of Reading, King Ethelred and his brother Alfred the Great attempted unsuccessfully to breach the Danes defences. The battle is described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and that account provides the earliest known record of the existence of Reading. The Danes remained in Reading until late in 871, when they retreated to their quarters in London. After the Battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest of England, William the Conqueror gave land in, in its 1086 Domesday Book listing, the town was explicitly described as a borough

33.
Berkshire Downs
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The Berkshire Downs are a range of chalk downland hills in southern England, part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Berkshire Downs are wholly within the county of Berkshire. The western parts of the downs are also known as the Lambourn Downs, the Berkshire Downs run east–west, with their scarp slope facing north into the Vale of White Horse and their dip slope bounded by the course of the River Kennet. Geologically they are continuous with the Marlborough Downs to the west, in the east they are divided from the Chilterns by Goring Gap on the River Thames. English downland has attracted human habitation since prehistoric times, the ancient track known as the Ridgeway runs along the Berkshire Downs. Prehistoric sites in the Downs include Waylands Smithy, numerous tumuli, Uffington White Horse, Liddington Castle and Uffington Castle, and Segsbury Camp and Grims Ditch. It is generally thought that in Anglo-Saxon times the downs were known as Æscesdūn or Ashdown, downland pasture is firm and well drained, suited to grazing sheep and grazing and training horses. Horse racing is a business in the area, with much of the downs covered with training areas. From Reading to Newbury trains run along the Reading to Taunton Line in the River Kennet Valley to reach Devon on the quickest route from London, from Reading there are the scenic Thames Valley stations of Pangbourne, Goring & Streatley and Cholsey

34.
North Wessex Downs
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The North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is located in the English counties of West Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. The AONB covers an area of some 1,730 km2 and it takes the form of a horseshoe on its side, with the open end facing east, surrounding the town of Newbury and the River Kennet watershed. The western extreme of the AONB reaches as far as Calne, at its northeast extreme, Lardon Chase within the North Wessex Downs AONB faces across the Goring Gap to the Chilterns AONB on the other side of the River Thames. This area includes the village of Lambourn and is hence sometimes known as the Lambourn Downs. Here too can be found the area of Savernake Forest. Finally, the highest stretch of the Downs runs east along the Berkshire-Hampshire border on the side of the River Kennet from the Berkshire Downs. Again the scarp slope is to the north and the dip slope is to the south into Hampshire, the area is a site of scientific interest in numerous fields and has an internationally important habitat for early gentian. Horse racing forms a major industry in the area, largely because of the good quality turf that comes with the chalk underlay, several of the upland villages, and especially the large village of Lambourn, are home to major racing stables. Other villages with strong horse racing connections include Beckhampton, Kingsclere, the term steeplechase originated in this area, a steeplechase originally being a race between two villages, navigated by reference to the church steeples visible across the rolling downs. On the south-east arm of the AONB can be found Watership Down where the book Watership Down by Richard Adams is set, to the north of the market town of Whitchurch. Significant parts of Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy are set on, the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty was designated in 1972. North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Website

North Wessex Downs
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This is a typical view of the chalk North Wessex Downs in the north west part of Hampshire
North Wessex Downs
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The South Western Slopes of Walbury Hill
North Wessex Downs
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Uffington White Horse and Dragon Hill
North Wessex Downs
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Watership Down, taken from the north-east

35.
Area of outstanding natural beauty
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An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is an area of countryside in England, Wales or Northern Ireland which has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of their importance, by the relevant public body, Natural England, Natural Resources Wales. In place of AONB, Scotland uses the similar national scenic area designation and they also differ from national parks in their more limited opportunities for extensive outdoor recreation. To achieve these aims, AONBs rely on planning controls and practical countryside management, as they have the same landscape quality, AONBs may be compared to the national parks of England and Wales. National parks are known to many inhabitants of the UK, by contrast. The idea for what would become the AONB designation was first put forward by John Dower in his 1945 Report to the Government on National Parks in England. Dower suggested there was need for protection of certain naturally beautiful landscapes which were unsuitable as national parks due to their small size and lack of wildness. Dowers recommendation for the designation of these other amenity areas was eventually embodied in the National Parks, there are 46 AONBs in Britain. The first AONB was designated in 1956 in the Gower Peninsula, AONBs vary greatly in terms of size, type and use of land, and whether they are partly or wholly open to the public. The smallest AONB is the Isles of Scilly,16 km2, the AONBs of England and Wales together cover around 18% of the countryside in the two countries. The AONBs of Northern Ireland together cover about 70% of Northern Irelands coastline, AONBs in England and Wales were originally created under the same legislation as the national parks, the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Unlike AONBs, national parks have special powers to prevent unsympathetic development. Two of the AONBs, which extend into a number of local authority areas, have their own statutory bodies. All English and Welsh AONBs have a dedicated AONB officer and other staff, as required by the CRoW Act, each AONB has a management plan that sets out the characteristics and special qualities of the landscape and how they will be conserved and enhanced. The AONBs are collectively represented by the National Association for AONBs, AONBs in Northern Ireland were designated originally under the Amenity Lands Act 1965, subsequently under the Nature Conservation and Amenity Lands Order 1985. There are growing concerns among environmental and countryside groups that AONB status is increasingly under threat from development, the Campaign to Protect Rural England said in July 2006 that many AONBs were under greater threat than ever before. The subsequent development, known as Falmer Stadium, was opened in July 2011. The Weymouth Relief Road in Dorset was constructed between 2008 and 2011, after environmental groups lost a High Court challenge to prevent its construction, writing in 2006, Professor Adrian Phillips listed threats facing AONBs

Area of outstanding natural beauty
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View from the Gower peninsula, the first AONB to be designated.
Area of outstanding natural beauty
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Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England and Wales
Area of outstanding natural beauty
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Falmer stadium under construction in 2010 in the former Sussex Downs AONB

36.
Hampshire
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Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, the capital city of England. The larger South Hampshire metropolitan area has a population of 1,547,000, Hampshire is notable for housing the birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force. It is bordered by Dorset to the west, Wiltshire to the north-west, Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, the southern boundary is the coastline of the English Channel and the Solent, facing the Isle of Wight. At its greatest size in 1890, Hampshire was the fifth largest county in England and it now has an overall area of 3,700 square kilometres, and measures about 86 kilometres east–west and 76 kilometres north–south. Hampshires tourist attractions include many seaside resorts and two parks, the New Forest and the South Downs. Hampshire has a maritime history and two of Europes largest ports, Portsmouth and Southampton, lie on its coast. The county is famed as home of writers Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Hampshire takes its name from the settlement that is now the city of Southampton. Southampton was known in Old English as Hamtun, roughly meaning village-town, the old name was recorded in the Domesday book as Hantescire, and it is from this spelling that the modern abbreviation Hants derives. From 1889 until 1959, the county was named the County of Southampton and has also been known as Southamptonshire. The region is believed to have continuously occupied since the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 BCE. At this time Britain was still attached to the European continent and was covered with deciduous woodland. The first inhabitants came overland from Europe, these were anatomically and behaviourally modern humans, notable sites from this period include Bouldnor Cliff. Agriculture had arrived in southern Britain by 4000 BCE, and with it a neolithic culture, some deforestation took place at that time, although it was during the Bronze Age, beginning in 2200 BCE, that this became more widespread and systematic. Hampshire has few monuments to show from early periods, although nearby Stonehenge was built in several phases at some time between 3100 BCE and 2200 BCE. It is maintained that by this period the people of Britain predominantly spoke a Celtic language, hillforts largely declined in importance in the second half of the second century BCE, with many being abandoned. Julius Caesar invaded southeastern England briefly in 55 and again in 54 BCE, notable sites from this period include Hengistbury Head, which was a major port. There is a Museum of the Iron Age in Andover, the Romans invaded Britain again in 43 CE, and Hampshire was incorporated into the Roman province of Britannia very quickly

37.
County
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A county is a geographical region of a country used for administrative or other purposes, in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French conté or cunté denoting a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count or a viscount. The modern French is comté, and its equivalents in other languages are contea, contado, comtat, condado, Grafschaft, graafschap, Gau, when the Normans conquered England, they brought the term with them. The Saxons had already established the districts became the historic counties of England. The Vikings introduced the term earl to the British Isles, thus, the Anglo-Saxons earl and earldom were taken as equivalent to the continental use of count and county under the conquering Normans, and over time the two blended and became equivalent terms. Further, the term became a synonym for the native English word scir or, in Modern English. Since a shire was a division of the kingdom, the term county evolved to designate an administrative division of states or of a national government in most other modern uses. A county may be subdivided into districts, hundreds, townships or other administrative jurisdictions within the county. A county usually, but not always, contains cities, towns, townships, villages, or other municipal corporations, Provinces in Argentina are divided into departments, except in the Buenos Aires Province, where they are called partidos. The Autonomous City of Buenos Aires is divided into communes, in the eastern states of Australia, counties are used in the administration of land titles. They do not generally correspond to a level of government, but are used in the identification of parcels of land, canadas five oldest provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island – are divided into counties. In addition to counties, Ontario is also subdivided into districts, district municipalities, metropolitan municipalities. British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, the word county is used to translate the Chinese term xiàn. In Mainland China, governed by the Peoples Republic of China, counties are the level of local government. There are 1,464 counties in the PRC out of a total of 2,862 county-level divisions, the number of counties has remained more or less constant since the Han dynasty. The county remains one of the oldest levels of government in China, the county government was particularly important in imperial China because this was the lowest layer at which the imperial government functioned. The head of a county during imperial times was the magistrate, in older context, prefecture and district are alternative terms to refer to xiàn before the establishment of the Republic of China. The English nomenclature county was adopted following the establishment of the ROC, contrary to the typical rural location of a county in Western countries, a city in China may enclose several counties

County
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Counties of Iran

38.
Donnington, Berkshire
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Donnington is a village in the civil parish of Shaw-cum-Donnington just north of the town of Newbury in Berkshire, England. Donnington Castle, a medieval castle of some historical significance, is in the village. It was the home of Richard Abberbury the Elder, the second Battle of Newbury was fought between Newbury and Donnington, as an attack on the castle, which was held for the Royalists by Sir John Boys. The main entrance range of Donnington Castle House was built in 1648 to incorporate an earlier lodge, Donnington Hospital almshouses, established in 1393, are the oldest charity in the county. The earliest current building dates from 1602, but the complex is very wide-ranging, with additional modern almshouses having been built in Bucklebury, other notable buildings include Donnington Priory and Donnington Grove. The latter is a Strawberry Hill Gothic mansion built by the antiquary and it is now a hotel at the centre of a golf course. From 18 February 2013, Donnington is served by Newbury and District bus services 6, Richard Abberbury the Elder, chamberlain to Anne of Bohemia, queen to King Richard II of England, owned estates in Donnington. Albemarle Bertie, Royal Navy officer and later Admiral during the American Revolutionary War and Napoleonic Wars, beau Brummell, Regency dandy, lived at Donnington Grove. Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Browns Schooldays, lived at Donnington Priory, barbara Euphan Todd, childrens author, died at Donnington. Sebastian Faulks, journalist and author, was born in the village, victoria County History, A History of the County of Berkshire, Volume 2. Victoria County History, A History of the County of Berkshire, media related to Donnington, Berkshire at Wikimedia Commons

39.
Donnington Castle
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Donnington Castle is a ruined medieval castle, situated in the small village of Donnington, just north of the town of Newbury in the English county of Berkshire. It was founded by Sir Richard Abberbury the Elder in 1386 and was bought by Thomas Chaucer before the castle was taken under control during the Tudor period. The site is under the care of English Heritage and is protected from unauthorised change as an ancient monument. The surviving castle gatehouse dates from this time, in 1398, the castle was sold to Thomas Chaucer, son of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, as a residence for his daughter Alice, who later became Duchess of Suffolk. The Duke of Suffolk William De La Pole made Donnington his occasional residence and this family later fell out with the Tudor monarchs, and the castle became a royal property. In 1514 it was given to Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, though Brandon appears to have stayed at the Donnington Castle in 1516, by the time the castle and manor returned to the Crown in 1535 the structured was in a state of decay. Both King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I visited Donnington Castle, in 1600, Elizabeth I gave the castle and surrounding manor to Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham. They quickly enhanced the castles defences by adding earthworks in a shape to provide gun emplacements. Parliamentarians laid siege to the castle in October 1644 and the held out for 18 months. With permission from the king, Boys surrendered the castle in April 1646 and was allowed to leave all his men. In 1646 Parliament voted to demolish the castle, only the gatehouse was left standing though the 17th-century earthworks can still be seen, the castle is now in the care of English Heritage and is a scheduled ancient monument number 233041. The castle stayed in the Packer family until the mid 18th century, when Robert Packer married Mary Winchcombe, and it was enclosed by a curtain wall, with a round tower at each of the four corners. Roughly halfway along the two running from west to east were two square towers. The courtyard enclosed by the walls would probably have contained a hall, kitchens. Measured from the sides of the curtain walls, the courtyard measured 67 feet north to south and 108 ft east to west. During the Civil War star-shaped defences were built around the castle to facilitate gun emplacements, only the gatehouse, crested by battlements, survived the castles destruction in 1646, standing three storeys high, it measures 17.5 by 11.75 feet internally. Modern walls standing 0.5 metres high outline the original layout of the demolished castle, the star-shaped earthworks added during the Civil War are still visible, surviving to a height of 1.7 m

40.
Lambourn
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Lambourn /ˈlæmbɔːrn/ is a large village and civil parish in West Berkshire. It lies just north of the M4 Motorway between Swindon and Newbury, and borders Wiltshire to the west and Oxfordshire to the north. After Newmarket it is the largest centre of training in England, and is home to a rehabilitation centre for injured jockeys, an equine hospital. To the north of the village are the prehistoric Seven Barrows and the nearby Long Barrow, Lambourn covers most of the upper valley of the River Lambourn, a bourne in the chalk upland area of the Berkshire Downs. It is 13 miles northwest of Newbury,11 miles southeast of Swindon,7 miles southwest of Wantage,7 miles north of Hungerford and 71 miles west of London and it is the westernmost place with more than 1000 residents in Berkshire and borders northeastern Wiltshire and southwestern Oxfordshire. Since the 1974 boundary changes, Lambourn has been the westernmost parish in Berkshire, Membury Service Station, Membury transmitting station and the northeastern quarter of Membury iron age fort are in the southwest corner of the parish. Lambourn lies on the crossroads of the B4000 from Newbury to Highworth, the B4000 used to follow the River Lambourn up the Newbury Road until the construction of the M4 motorway in the early 1970s. When the motorway was built, the B4000 was diverted along Ermin Street as the old road could not be widened for HGVs in the streets of Great Shefford, Eastbury. The B4001 was also diverted onto Ermin Street because of the M4, the M4 passes through the southern part of the parish between Junction 14 and Junction 15. In 1898 the Lambourn Valley Railway was built connecting Lambourn to Newbury and its ownership merged with the Great Western Railway in 1905 and continued in operation until it was closed in 1960. The nearest station is now at Hungerford on the Reading to Taunton line and they heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Green walls and white walls rose, there were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new, there was victory and defeat, and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens, and mounds covered them, and the doors were shut. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. The Lambourn Downs are part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and cover an area of 231 square miles, originally they were entirely in Berkshire, but northern third of the downs were transferred to Oxfordshire when the county border was reorganised in 1974. Due to the poor, chalky soil, the downs could not be used for growing crops until the advent of modern fertilisers, consequently, the high ground was only used for breeding sheep – hence the name of Lambourn – and horses. The Oxford Don and author J. R. R. Tolkien lived nearby and travelled to the downs with his family and he was impressed by the downs with their sarsen stones, barrows and hill forts and painted pictures of Lambourn in 1912

41.
Walbury Hill
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Walbury Hill is a hill in Berkshire, England. It is located in the southwest of the county, close to the borders with Hampshire and Wiltshire, and around 7 kilometres southeast of the town of Hungerford. At 297 metres above sea level, it is the highest hill in Berkshire, on the hills summit is the Iron Age hill fort of Walbury Camp. Combe Gibbet stands on the adjoining Gallows Down, the true summit is marked by a triangulation pillar approximately 100 metres from the main Test Way. Before the use of satellites was commonplace, Walbury Hill was occasionally used by the BBC as a relay station during the Newbury Races. There is no metalled road across the hill, but the byway is open to all traffic and maintained with a gravel surface. The ridged summit is popular with paragliding enthusiasts. The site is one of three nationally important chalk grassland sites that lie within the North Wessex Downs along with Rushmore and Conholt Downs, Walbury Hill is the starting point for both the Test Way and the Wayfarers Walk. There is also a small circular brick building, approximately 6 feet high. This appears to be a disused reservoir

42.
Landscape garden
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The English garden presented an idealized view of nature. The work of Lancelot Capability Brown was particularly influential, by the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk, the gardens of the future Emperor Paul. It also had a influence on the form of the public parks. These parks featured vast lawns, woods, and pieces of architecture and these gardens, modelled after the gardens of Versailles, were designed to impress visitors with their size and grandeur. William Kent was an architect, painter and furniture designer who introduced Palladian style architecture to England and his gardens were designed to complement the Palladian architecture of the houses he built. He collaborated with Kent on several major gardens, providing the botanical expertise which allowed Kent to realize his architectural visions, Kent created one of the first true English landscape gardens at Chiswick House for Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. Between 1733 and 1736, he redesigned the garden, adding lawns sloping down to the edge of the river, for the first time the form of a garden was inspired not by architecture, but by an idealized version of nature. Rousham House in Oxfordshire is considered by some as the most accomplished, the patron was General Dormer, who commissioned Bridgeman to begin the garden in 1727, then brought in Kent to recreate it in 1737. Bridgeman had built a series of gardens, including a grotto of Venus, on the slope along the river Cherwell, finally, he added cascades modelled on those of the garden of Aldobrandini and Pratolino in Italy, to add movement and drama. Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, was a more radical departure from the formal French garden. In the early 18th century, Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, had commissioned Charles Bridgeman to design a formal garden, bridgemans design included an octagonal lake and a Rotunda designed by Vanbrugh. In the 1730s, William Kent and James Gibbs were appointed to work with Bridgeman, Kent remade the lake in a more natural shape, and created a new kind of garden, which took visitors on a tour of picturesque landscapes. The garden attracted visitors from all over Europe, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and it became the inspiration for landscape gardens in Britain and on the Continent. Stourhead, in Wiltshire, created by banker Henry Hoare, was one of the first picturesque gardens, Hoare had travelled to Italy on the Grand Tour and had returned with a painting by Claude Lorrain. He sought to create an ideal landscape out of the English countryside and he created artificial lakes and used dams and canals to transform streams or springs into the illusion that a river flowed through the garden. He compared his own role as a designer to that of a poet or composer. Here I put a comma, there, when its necessary to cut the view, I put a parenthesis, there I end it with a period, the most important were, Petworth in 1752, Chatsworth in 1761, Bowood in 1763, Blenheim Palace in 1764. Humphry Repton was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, to help clients visualize his designs, Repton produced Red Books with explanatory text and watercolors with a system of overlays to show before and after views

Landscape garden
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Rotunda at Stowe Garden (1730-38)
Landscape garden
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The paintings of Claude Lorrain inspired Stourhead and other English landscape gardens
Landscape garden
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Castle Howard (1699-1712), a predecessor of the English garden modelled on the gardens of Versailles.
Landscape garden
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Ionic Temple at Chiswick House

43.
Highclere Castle
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Highclere Castle /ˈhaɪklɪər/ is a country house in the Jacobethan style by the architect Charles Barry, with a park designed by Capability Brown. The 5, 000-acre estate is in Hampshire, England, about 5 miles south of Newbury and it is the country seat of the Earl of Carnarvon, a branch of the Anglo-Welsh Herbert family. Highclere Castle was a location for the British comedy series Jeeves and Wooster. It was also used as the filming location for the award-winning period drama Downton Abbey. The great hall and some of the bedrooms located inside the building were used for filming. The castle and gardens are open to the public during July and August, the castle stands on the site of an earlier house, which was built on the foundations of the medieval palace of the Bishops of Winchester, who owned this estate from the 8th century. The original site was recorded in the Domesday Book, an itinerary of King Edward II lists him as spending 2 September 1320 with Rigaud of Assier, the Bishop of Winchester, at Bishops Clere, alias Highclere. The same tour has him on 31 August 1320 at Sandleford Priory, where he stayed or tarried for the night. Since 1679 Highclere has been home to the Earls of Carnarvon and their forebears. In 1692, Sir Robert Sawyer, a lawyer, MP, Speaker, and college friend of Samuel Pepys, bequeathed a mansion at Highclere to his daughter, Margaret. Their second son, Robert Sawyer Herbert, inherited Highclere, began its portrait collection and his nephew and heir Henry Herbert was created Baron Porchester and later Earl of Carnarvon by George III. In 1680 Sir Robert Sawyer presented the living of Highclere to Rev. Isaac Milles, the elder, white Oak was the parsonage where Milles took pupils, including the many children of Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke, by marriage the new proprietor of Highclere. Rev. Isaac Milles, the younger, carried on his father’s school at Highclere, Milles the youngers daughter Elizabeth married Reverend Richard Pococke, LL. B. and had the Rt. Rev. Bishop Pococke was one of the first to collect seeds of the Cedar of Lebanon which he did during his tour of Lebanon in 1738. Some of these seeds germinated and grew at Highclere and Wilton House, and of his six sons, the eldest, Edward Pococke was chaplain to the Earl of Pembroke, and rector of Minall or Mildenhall, Wiltshire, and canon of Salisbury. William Cobbett in his journal of November 2,1821, whilst at Hurstbourne Tarrant wrote, I came from Berghclere this morning and it is a fine season to look at woods. The oaks are still covered, the beeches in their best dress, the elms yet pretty green, and this is, according to my fancy, the prettiest park that I have ever seen. A great variety of hill and dell, I like this place better than Fonthill, Blenheim, Stowe, or any other gentlemans grounds that I have seen

44.
M4 corridor
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The M4 corridor is an area in the United Kingdom adjacent to the M4 motorway, which runs from London to South Wales. It is a major high-technology hub, important cities and towns linked by the M4 include London, Slough, Bracknell, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Swindon, Bath, Bristol, Newport, Cardiff, and Swansea. The area is served by the Great Western Main Line, including the South Wales Main Line. The eastern end of the English M4 corridor is home to a number of technology companies, particularly in Berkshire, Swindon. For this reason part of the M4 Corridor is sometimes described as Englands Silicon Valley. Slough, Windsor, Maidenhead, Reading, Bracknell and Newbury are the towns in the Berkshire stretch of the M4. Reading is home to information technology and financial services businesses, including Cisco, Microsoft, ING Direct, Oracle, Prudential, Yell Group. Vodafone has a corporate campus in Newbury, O2 plc is in Slough. Maidenhead is the home Hutchison 3G UKs Headquarters and Tesla Motors UK Head Office, investment has gradually spread westwards since the 1980s. In the west the interchange of the M4 motorway and M5 motorway at the Almondsbury Interchange near Bristol had seen growth of industries by the mid 1990s. The major Welsh towns and cities along the M4 corridor are Bridgend, Cardiff, Llanelli, Neath, Newport, Port Talbot, South Wales is an industrial heartland of the UK. The 1980s and 1990s saw the development of the Swansea Enterprise Park, the Celtic Manor Resort located adjacent to the M4 in Newport has undergone significant investment and successfully hosted the 2010 Ryder Cup. Newport has seen significant growth in the industry since the late 1980s and is home to factories for electronics firms such as Alcatel. The 1990s also saw significant investment in Cardiff such as in Cardiff Gate, one site of note on the M4 Corridor is Port Talbot Steelworks - the largest steel producer in the UK and one of the biggest steel producers in Europe. Since the start of the 21st Century there has been evidence of more investment west of Cardiff, such as, Port Talbot Aberavon Beach Baglan Industrial Park Baglan Energy Park 33-acre Amazon. co

45.
Bracknell
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Bracknell is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, England. It lies 11 miles to the east of Reading,9 miles south of Maidenhead,10 miles southwest of Windsor,16 miles northwest of Guildford and 34 miles west of central London. The town has a population of 77,256 and is twinned with the German city of Leverkusen, the town is surrounded, on the east and south, by Swinley Woods and Crowthorne Woods. The name Bracknell is first recorded in a Winkfield Boundary Charter of AD942 as Braccan heal, an early form of the towns name, Brakenhale, still survives as the name of one of its schools. The town covers all of the old village of Easthampstead and the hamlet of Ramslade, there is a Bronze Age round barrow at Bill Hill. Easthampstead Park was a royal hunting lodge in Windsor Forest. It was later the home of the Trumbulls who were patrons of Alexander Pope from Binfield. To the north-east of the town is to be found the Quelm Stone, a stone, and to the south-west, just over the border in Crowthorne, is Caesars Camp. One of the oldest buildings in the town is the Old Manor public house, next door once stood the Hinds Head coaching inn, where it is said Dick Turpin used to drink. It is believed there were once underground tunnels between the two, along which the famous highwayman could escape from the authorities. Other surviving old pubs are the Red Lion and the Bull, all timber-framed, the oldest place of worship in the town is the parish church of St Michael and St Mary Magdalene in Easthampstead. There has been a church there since Saxon times, although the present building dates from the mid 19th century, holy Trinity Church near the town centre was built in 1851. Bracknell was designated a new town in 1949, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the site was originally a village cum small town in the civil parish of Warfield in the Easthampstead Rural District. Very little of the original Bracknell is left, the location was preferred to White Waltham, which was also considered, because the Bracknell site avoided encroaching on good quality agricultural land. It also had the advantage of being on a railway line. The existing town centre and industrial areas were to be retained with new industry brought in to provide jobs, at the heart of most Bracknell neighbourhoods is a church, a small parade of shops, a primary school, a community centre and a pub. The neighbourhoods varied in population from 3,000 to 9,000, the plans included pedestrianisation, the construction of a ring road, and segregation of industrial areas from residential areas. Because of Bracknells age, it was decided that it should undergo renovation, designs and plans were submitted and rejected first time round

46.
Maidenhead
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Maidenhead is a large town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies south-west of the River Thames, but at Maidenhead, the town has a population of 73,404. Its urban area has a population of just under 95,000, Maidenheads name stems from the riverside area where the New wharf or Maiden Hythe was built, perhaps as early as Saxon times. It has been suggested that the nearby Great Hill of Taplow was called the Mai Dun by the Iron Age Brythons, the area of the town centre was originally known as South Ellington and is recorded in the Domesday Book as Ellington in the hundred of Beynhurst. In 1280, a bridge was erected across the river to replace a ferry in what was then the hamlet of South Ellington, the Great West Road to Reading, Gloucester and Bristol was diverted over the new bridge. Previously, it had kept to the bank and crossed the Thames by ford at Cookham. Within a few years a wharf was constructed next to the bridge, the earliest record of this name change is in the Bray Court manorial rolls of 1296. The bridge led to the growth of Maidenhead, a point for coaches on the journeys between London and Bath and the High Street became populated with inns. The current Maidenhead Bridge, a landmark, dates from 1777 and was built at a cost of £19,000. King Charles I met his children for the last time before his execution in 1649 at the Greyhound Inn on the High Street, when the Great Western Railway came to the town, it began to expand. Muddy roads were replaced and public services were installed, the High Street began to change again, and substantial Victorian red brick architecture began to appear throughout the town. Maidenhead became its own entity in 1894, being split from the parishes of both Bray and Cookham. Maidenhead Citadel Corps of the Salvation Army was first opened in the town in the mid-1880s, Maidenhead Citadel Band was soon founded in 1886 by Bandmaster William Thomas, who later became mayor of the town. By Edwardian times, nearby Boulters Lock became a resort, especially on Ascot Sunday. The town is part of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and it was previously an independent municipal borough. The Maidenhead constituency is one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, and its current MP is Theresa May, the mayor of Windsor & Maidenhead is Councillor Sayonara Luxton. Bray village is linked to Maidenhead by the exclusive Fishery Estate which lies on the banks of the Thames, to the north are the Cookhams, Cookham Village, Cookham Rise and Cookham Dean. To the west is the area of Pinkneys Green and these lie south of the Berkshire-Buckinghamshire border, which is formed by the River Thames

47.
Slough
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Slough is a large town in Berkshire, England,21 miles west of London,3 miles north of Windsor,6 miles east of Maidenhead,12 miles south-east of High Wycombe and 20 miles north-east of Reading. The A4 and the Great Western Main Line pass through the town, in 2011, Sloughs population was the most ethnically diverse in the United Kingdom outside London. With the highest proportion of adherents in England. Slough is home to the Slough Trading Estate, the largest industrial estate in single ownership in Europe. Blackberry, McAfee, Burger King and LEGO have head offices in the town, the Slough Trading Estate provides over 17,000 jobs in 400 businesses. The town is approximately 9.1 miles to the west of Heathrow Airport, the name, which means soil, was first recorded in 1195 as Slo. It first seems to have applied to a hamlet between Upton to the east and Chalvey to the west, roughly around the Crown Crossroads where the road to Windsor met the Great West Road. The Domesday Survey of 1086 refers to Upton, and a wood for 200 pigs, during the 13th century, King Henry III had a palace at Cippenham. Parts of Upton Court were built in 1325, while St Mary the Virgin Church in Langley was probably built in the late 11th or early 12th century, though it has been rebuilt and enlarged several times. From the mid-17th century, stagecoaches began to pass through Slough and Salt Hill, by 1838 and the opening of the Great Western Railway, Upton-cum-Chalveys parish population had reached 1,502. In 1849, a line was completed from Slough railway station to Windsor and Eton Central railway station, opposite Windsor Castle. In April 1920, the Government sold the site and its contents to the Slough Trading Co. Ltd, repair of ex-army vehicles continued until 1925, when the Slough Trading Company Act was passed allowing the company to establish an industrial estate. Spectacular growth and employment ensued, with Slough attracting workers from many parts of the UK, during the Second World War, Slough experienced a series of air raids, mostly in October 1940, and an emergency hospital treating casualties from London was set up in Slough. Local air raid deaths and deaths at the account for the 23 civilian lives recorded lost in the borough area. After the war, several large housing developments arose to take large numbers of people migrating from war-damaged London. In the 21st century, Slough has seen major redevelopment of the town centre, old buildings are being replaced with new offices and shopping complexes. Tesco has replaced an existing superstore with a larger Tesco Extra, the Heart of Slough Project is a plan for the large-scale redevelopment of the town centre as a focus and cultural quarter for the creative media, information and communications industries. It will create a complex, multi-functional buildings, visual landmarks

Slough
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Slough Trading Estate
Slough
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Former GWR locomotive 6664 photographed near the engine shed at Slough, October 1955.
Slough
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The newly refurnished entrance to the Queensmere Shopping Mall.
Slough
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Slough Trading Estate played a major part in making Slough an important business centre in South East England

48.
Thatcham
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Thatcham is a town in the historic county of Berkshire, England, centred 3 miles east of Newbury,14 miles west of Reading and 54 miles west of London. Its population grew rapidly in the half of the 20th century. Thatcham straddles the River Kennet, the Kennet and Avon Canal, the A4 and it is served by Thatcham railway station on the line between Reading and Newbury. Local employment is chiefly in light industrial premises, sales and distribution, retail and public sectors, see also West Berkshire, its district. The area has evidence of dating from prehistoric times and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the strongest claimant to being the oldest continuously inhabited place in Britain. The well-preserved remains of a Mesolithic settlements dating from 8400 to 7700 BC have been found in its vicinity, evidence also exists of Bronze and Iron Age settlements and of a Roman town. The name may have derived from that of a Saxon chief called Tace. The settlement was known as Taceham - ham meaning village in Saxon and it is also possible that the name may have come from the Saxon þæc or thaec. Wherever it came from, the name Taceham persisted until after the Norman Conquest in 1066 before going through several changes until the current form was adopted in the 16th century. The town had a period of great prosperity around 1304 when the Chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr on the A4, at that time the population was larger than Newburys but it declined as a result of the Black Death in 1348. There is a Norman parish church of St. Mary, which was reconstructed in 1857. This is believed to be built on the site as an earlier Saxon church. It was also known as St. Lukes. In 1121 King Henry I founded the great Abbey of Reading and endowed it with gifts of land. At the same time Thatcham Hundred ceased to exist, the part was transferred to Faircross Hundred. Thatcham has a site of Special Scientific Interest just to the south of the town, the name Thatcham is brand-associated with the approval ratings for car security systems issued by the Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre based near the town. On July 20,2007, parts of Thatcham were flooded during a period of sustained heavy rain, about 1100 properties were affected, many residents moved out into mobile homes. Thatcham is twinned with, Nideggen, Germany HMS Thatcham, a Ham class minesweeper Thatcham Town Council Thatcham Historical Society

Thatcham
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The Broadway, Thatcham
Thatcham
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Chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr was erected around 1304
Thatcham
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Station Road during flooding